


Gifts of the Season

by tasteofthebitchpudding



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Depression, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Neighbors, Sexual Content, Therapy, cat dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2019-09-13 04:38:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 86,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tasteofthebitchpudding/pseuds/tasteofthebitchpudding
Summary: Life has taken a hard turn into disasterland for Christine Daaé--unemployed, directionless, and in a rut--leaving her with a serious lack of Christmas spirit. Will the not-so-secret Santa next door be able to melt this Grinch's heart before they both spend Christmas alone? Modern AU





	1. Chapter 1

Scraape

Christine jerked as the sharp, metallic drag startled her to wakefulness.  
The morning dawned, as grey, cold, and blustery as the day before. And the day before that, and the day  
before that...It didn’t feel different from any other day. Christmas magic was nothing but a racket.

Rolling to her back, she stared up at the bare, white ceiling, matching her bare, white walls. She’d been  
meaning to paint, had picked out and purchased two gallons of a soft, frosty blue for the bedroom, but had  
lost enthusiasm for the task as the days stretched on. When she was a child, she would stare up at the  
textured stucco ceiling of her bedroom and search for hidden shapes, as though she were outside looking  
at clouds. It seemed appropriate, she thought, that the sterile white walls and ceiling were bare now...as  
boring and barren and empty as her life.

Three years ago, if someone would have told Christine Dyer that she’d be unemployed, divorced, and  
living on her own in the small house she’d inherited when her last living relative died, she’d have laughed  
in their face. Things like that happened to other people. She had a handsome husband from a good family,  
a job she adored, and a father who doted on her.  
Then.

Another forty eight hours and it would be all over, she reminded herself.  
According to Cosmo, she’d then have to contend with the indignity of having no one to kiss on New  
Year’s Eve, but somehow that seemed less depressing than thinking about what she would do once the  
Hallmark Channel stopped playing an endless loop of sappy, Christmas-themed romances.

The station’s usual fare just didn’t have the same panache as the holiday movies, the same sense of  
gut-twisting nostalgia. She wasn’t sure why she was torturing herself every day watching them, when she  
spent more time yelling at the screen over the far-fetched plotlines and how many of them starred that girl  
from Full House, but she couldn’t resist. Perhaps, she thought, if she watched enough romantic stories of  
Christmas miracles, one would find her.  
She snorted in disgust with herself. Fat fucking chance of that.  
Scraape  
She would not be completely alone, she reminded herself. Jamie was coming by to have dinner that  
evening, before making the drive to her fiance's family home on Christmas Day. She really needed to get  
up and start the bird, if she wanted it to be done by the time Jamie arrived for dinner.  
Scraape  
Christine huffed in aggravation. She’d been listening to the obnoxious sound of someone shoveling out  
their driveway for the last forty minutes, and it was barely eight o’clock. Don’t they know some people  
might want to sleep in on Christmas Eve?! It didn’t matter that she slept in every day, she reminded  
herself, this was rude. Throwing back the covers, she jammed her feet into the slippers on the side of her  
bed and stomped to the window, throwing open one side of the curtains. Sure enough, her neighbor was  
down there, scraping his driveway down to the bare concrete.  
Scraape  
“He’s lucky I don’t shove that shovel right up his holly jolly ass,” she mumbled to no one in particular,  
not that there was anyone there to overhear. She turned away, letting the curtain fall shut with annoyance.  
She didn’t want to think about her neighbor today, or about the way her stomach bunched in nerves  
whenever she was forced to interact with him, or the small collection of far-too thoughtful gifts she’d  
recently acquired...

Turning away, she pulled her t-shirt over her head. She would actually do her hair today. It was the least  
she could do on Christmas, to not look like a hobo in the face of Jamie’s glossy dark perfection. She  
would tame her unruly rat’s nest of curls, evicting anything with a tail, and maybe even put on some  
makeup. New year, new me, she thought, kicking off her panties.  
Scraaape  
She whirled back to window in irritation. That had sounded obnoxiously close. Pulling back the curtain  
again, she glared down to see what exactly he was up to. Sure enough, her neighbor was now shoveling a  
neat row on the near side of his driveway, closest to her house. The movement of the curtain must have  
caught in his peripheral vision, for just as her forehead alighted on the frosty glass, he looked up. She  
realized that her bare nipples were grazing the white sheers, remembering belatedly that she’d stripped  
out of her nightclothes and stood naked before the window, and she jumped back with a strangled little  
yelp.  
He hadn’t seen, there’s no way he could see through the sheers. Right?

Crouching, she lifted the edge of the curtain, just enough to peek around. He wasn’t staring up, agape at  
her window, and she sighed in relief. After yesterday, she wasn’t sure if she could take anymore  
embarrassing moments in front of this man. Hesitating, Christine peered around the curtain again. He  
hadn't resumed his work, but was standing still as a statue, staring straight ahead, gripping the handle of  
his snow shovel. Deciding his attention must have been captured by some mittens-wearing squirrel, or a  
majestic stag bearing boughs of holly in its ludicrous, 'gifts of the season’-style antlers, she left the  
bedroom to start the arduous task of de-rat’s nest-ing her tangle of hair.

The cheerful holiday note had been slipped through the handle of every house's front door just before  
Thanksgiving.

Happy Holidays, neighbors!  
Some of you who have lived here awhile might recall a tradition one of our residents did every  
year—Gifts of the Season for your neighbor. I'm sad to say that sweet lady is no longer with us, but I  
thought it might be fun to resurrect the tradition in her honor, and as a way to get to know some of the  
new faces we have on our little corner of heaven! Participation is not mandatory, of course, and to keep  
the expense down, I thought everyone could focus on their neighbors to the left. This way, the holiday  
cheer will flow around the circle! As a tribute to Mamma D, I'm hoping everyone might include her  
famous fruitcake!  
Have fun and be jolly!

Christine had snorted in disgust when she'd read the note. She had a feeling the author was that PTA  
busybody from the middle of the cul-de-sac. That was her family fruitcake recipe this stranger was  
referring to, and although she wasn’t terribly interested in making the labor-intensive dessert, she didn’t  
like the idea of it being communal property. What’s next? she thought. Parking on my lawn “in memory  
of Mamma D”?  
She had moved into her great aunt’s house at the beginning of August with a laundry list of renovations  
and upgrades she had wanted to make on the little three bedroom bungalow. She’d spent the remainder of  
the month doing little more than working on her tan and exhausting the Beach Reads shelf at the local  
Half-Price Books during the day, and yelling at International House Hunters on HGTV by night. By  
October she’d abandoned the pretense of getting dressed every morning, and her closet full of stylish,  
professional clothes was abandoned in favor of what she considered her “daytime” pajamas. Leggings and

yoga pants with tank tops and t-shirts and bulky cardigans when she felt chilly became the norm, and she  
wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to force her feet into a pair of heels ever again, if she ever got a job and  
rejoined the land of the living.

Her marriage had been the first thing to slip.

She and Riley had been childhood playmates who reconnected when they were both at university. Despite  
the fact that her new mother-in-law didn’t seem to like her much, and despite the fact that their guest list  
had twice the amount of country club strangers than any of her friends from the music conservatory, their  
wedding had been like something out of a fairytale. It hadn’t mattered that they didn’t have much in  
common, or had different priorities...or at least Christine had thought at the time.

Daddy had gotten sick the following year, and she’d spent so much time taking care of him—first  
spending countless hours at the hospital, then caring for him at home once he’d been released, and finally  
when he’d been admitted into hospice—that she hadn’t noticed her husband had all but disappeared from  
her life. When Riley had started working late nights at the office, she hadn’t thought anything of it, as  
busy as she was changing bedsheets and reading at her father’s side. She buried her father the first week  
of November, and Riley had left the week before Christmas.

Afterwards, the entire world seemed to be stuck underwater, and Christine had moved through the  
rippling waves sluggishly, in slow motion, barely registering anything around her. Her principal and  
co-workers had been endlessly sympathetic, and she’d drifted through the rest of the school year. When  
the private corporation who had opened the arts-focused charter school decided their little experiment  
wasn’t enough of a money maker, she and her co-workers were given their walking papers before classes

wrapped up in May. Her great aunt, Mamma D, had past away somewhere in the blur between Christmas  
and Memorial Day, leaving her small house to Christine’s dead father, and thus to her.

When the obnoxiously cheerful holiday note was handed out around the street, she was shocked to realize  
it had already been nearly four months since she’d moved in, shocked even further when the calendar on  
her phone told her it was December first. She'd already felt enough like a Grinch when her entire street  
had wasted no time stringing up colored lights all over their houses, leaving her to be the odd man out.  
At first, her quiet neighbor's house was also dark, as well as the house of college students next to him,  
making her feel a tiny bit better...then overnight the college students had put up a bunch of obnoxious  
holiday blow-ups in their yard, and a tasteful line of white twinkle lights had appeared outlining her  
neighbor’s roof. Christine felt colossally betrayed.

She had only spoken to the man next door a handful of times, which suited her just fine, and didn't seem  
to bother him much either. She had pegged him as the strong, silent type, although she wondered how  
much of the pointed silence was a result of their disastrous first meeting.

There had been a cat, a lovely cat coming up to her back door the first few weeks after she'd moved in.  
The green-eyed visitor would mewl pitifully and paw at the glass, turning her to putty in its  
sharply-clawed paw. She'd begun leaving a little dish of tuna out on her terrace, and sure enough, it would  
be devoured by the sleek feline. This is your life now, Christine. You sit in the dark and try to lure cats  
into your sad, empty existence. This is how they'll find your body-—alone, dead for days, being picked at  
by Muf y and Whiskers and several dozen of their friends.

She wouldn’t see the cat more than once or twice a week, and as the rainy summer came to a close, she  
grew worried about the cat’s welfare once the colder months blew in. That was how she found herself,  
creeping through her darkening backyard, waving around a bag of cat treats one evening. When the cat  
had slipped through the tall hedgerow into the neighbor’s yard, Christine had followed, shimmying  
through the branches in the dirt.

The cat had hurried to the sliding glass door of her neighbor's house, and at first she'd assumed that the  
little beast went from door to door throughout the neighborhood, begging for food. Christine had leaned  
forward in a crouch, stretching her hand out to the wayward feline, when a masculine voice had suddenly  
echoed out across dark yard as the door slid open.

“Again?! What do I need to do to keep you inside, board up the windows? Why are you such a naughty  
girl?”

She’d frozen, shocked at the man's voice. Rich and deep and resonant, with a sensuousness she thought  
only existed in movies, he continued to address the sleek feline as he stepped out the door.  
Before she’d been able to dwell on how it was possible for sex to have been distilled into pure sound,  
she’d overbalanced in her crouch, toppling onto her hands. Her forward movement in the grass must have  
triggered some motion sensor, for at that moment a floodlight blazed on, highlighting where she'd  
sprawled in the darkness.

Up till that point, the man possessing the sexy voice had been a tall, appealing looking silhouette in the  
bright doorway of his kitchen. When the floodlight illuminated the small yard, revealing Christine  
floundering in the grass, it also illuminated him.

She would be ashamed of herself later, after she was back in her own house, panting in fear and anger and  
humiliation. After the adrenaline that spiked in the wake of the altercation faded, after she'd stood crying  
in her shower. She would feel shame at her reaction, once she'd huddled in her bed alone, wondering what  
had happened to the man next door.

At the moment though, she couldn't help the way she’d gasped in horror, the way she’d scrambled back,  
away from the man's twisted appearance. His face resembled a melted candle; the livid, shiny skin  
stretched and twisted over high, sharp cheekbones. His eyes were slightly sunken back beneath his brow,  
and the lower lid on the left seemed to be melted into the skin beneath, dragging it down slightly. The  
worst of the damage seemed to be confined to the top half of his face, leaving his mouth and lower jaw  
scarred, but mostly unscathed. The livid, melted-looking skin continued down the left side of his jaw,  
disappearing into the neckline of his shirt. His mouth, which looked normal to her, had been twisted in an  
angry, ugly scowl.

Christine had sputtered excuses as the man furiously shouted at her about trespassing. When she'd made  
an involuntary noise of fear as he'd advanced on her, he'd frozen. Whipping away from her, he'd brought a  
hand to his face.

The roar of blood pounding in her ears was all she’d been able to hear, and with the man turned away for  
the moment, she’d decided to make good her escape, before he...did whatever it was he was planning on  
doing to her. Crab-walking back several feet, she’d scrambled to turn over, darting through the low hole  
in the hedges, just as he’d turned back around, his hand splayed over his face.

When she was safe back in her own kitchen, Christine had quickly turned out the lights, and stood there  
panting for several long minutes. She’d scraped her forearm painfully on the low branches she’d squeezed  
through, and could feel another gash on her cheek. She stayed there in the dark kitchen until she’d been  
able to calm her breathing, until it was obvious that the man with the twisted face wasn’t planning on  
giving pursuit to attack her, or call the police on her for trespassing.

Her fear had quickly turned to anger. How dare he! All she had been trying to do was help his poor, lost  
cat and he’d screamed at her, had frightened her for no reason. By the time she’d moved upstairs after  
ensuring all of her doors were locked, her anger had dissolved into overwhelming despair. She’d stood  
under the hot spray of her shower, sobbing out her frustration at the catastrophe in her neighbor’s yard,  
over the hard turn left into disaster her life had taken, at how much she missed her father and the way  
things used to be.

Before going to bed that night, Christine had walked down her short upstairs hallway to turn out the foyer  
light, when the view from her upstairs hall window stopped her in her tracks. From there, she had a  
perfect view into the back of her neighbor’s house, and she’d been able to see him, still standing in his  
kitchen. He’d been slumped over the counter, his head bowed, a posture of abject misery. Any residual  
anger Christine might have had fled at the sight of him. He still wore the same grey t-shirt and dark jeans  
that he had when he’d come out of the house, and she wondered if he’d been slumped over his counter  
since then.

She’d felt tears prick at her eyes again once she’d huddled beneath her comforter, feeling shame burn  
through her. That was her neighbor. She’d gone into his yard, had tried to steal his cat, and reacted like a  
rude idiot at the sight of his face.

He might be a war veteran, dummy. Or he could have lost his whole life in a fire. And here you are,  
acting like he’s a knife-wielding lunatic when you’re the one climbing through the bushes.

Her interactions with her neighbor were minimal after that. She wouldn't see him again for several weeks,  
on a cool afternoon in September. She'd heard a delivery truck idling at the curb earlier that afternoon,  
had heard the muffled cursing of the driver, but no knock had sounded on her door, not that she was  
expecting anything. It wasn't until later, when she'd decided, in a fit of productivity after watching several  
hours of HGTV, that she would actually plant the tulip bulbs she'd purchased weeks prior.

If Christine had been able to choose how she'd appear the second time she encountered the man next door,  
on her hands and knees in the dirt—again—was not what she would have chosen. Instead, fate had her  
crouched over, ass in the air, as she dug a hole on the side of her yard when her neighbor backed into his  
driveway.

There were several giant boxes propped against his garage door, preventing him from backing directly in,  
as Christine had seen him do previously. The door would come up, and go promptly down, and she would  
see neither hide nor hair of him again, unless she spied him through her hallway window. The boxes were  
obviously what the delivery driver had been cursing about, she thought, as her neighbor stepped out of his  
car, just a few feet away from where she kneeled.

Christine wondered if he would seem as tall as he did if she ever encountered him while standing. As it  
was, from her repeated position on the ground, he was tall and slim, with a rangy build, and she reflected  
again that he had appealing silhouette, was precisely the type of man she would normally find attractive.

She was close enough to see the subtle striping on the white dress shirt he wore, tucked into dark grey  
pants, the matching suit jacket slung over his arm. He stopped short when he saw her sitting there in the  
grass, his shoulders tensing. Christine watched his sinewy forearm tighten and flex as it shoved the car  
door shut with more force than necessary before he stalked off without a word.

It wasn't until the front door had slammed behind him that she realized his face had been covered.

She remained crawling around in the dirt for another half hour or so, realizing once she'd had all of her  
holes dug that she hadn't brought all of the tulip bulbs that she'd purchased outside. When she'd returned  
to the yard, bulbs in hand, the boxes had been removed from in front of her neighbor's garage, and his car  
secured within. Christine couldn't shake the feeling that he'd waited for her to leave to do so.

That first week of December had brought with it a vicious cold snap, and Christine huddled under several  
blankets on her sofa. She’d spied puffs of white coming from the chimney stacks of her neighbors all  
around the street, as she left to make a grocery run before the snow started falling in earnest. She hadn’t  
even considered the need for firewood before right that very second, even though she knew how  
expensive it would be to run the old fashioned boiler all winter to heat the house. Upgrading the HVAC  
had been on her to-do list when she’d moved in, she reminded herself.

She’d returned home that evening, lugging several over-laden bags, to find a neat stack of firewood on the  
side of her porch, complete with a big red bow and a note written on green foiled holiday stationary.

Stay warm this winter!

She had whipped around, upending one of her grocery bags in the process, looking for the mysterious  
wood-bearer. There was no one. Leaning over the railing of her porch, she surveyed the street  
suspiciously. The house that she had remembered being on the left when she was a child and would visit  
Mamma V with her father, had been torn down some years back. The land was purchased by a developer,  
but as of yet, it remained an empty field. The two houses directly across the street were populated by  
families with middle and high school-aged children, proudly displaying signs for various sports and  
theater boosters in their yards. The women were always on the go, hustling children in and out of their  
big, luxury minivans, while the men were only glimpsed on weekends, blowing leaves and washing cars.

Christine didn’t think either of them would have bothered noticing she hadn’t used her fireplace. Her head  
turned hesitantly to the right. Her quiet neighbor’s house was black from the street, the only light coming  
from the tiny white lights across his roof and those were on a timer, she knew. That didn’t mean he wasn’t  
home, she knew. The front of his house was always black and deserted looking, but from her little upstairs  
window, she knew that his kitchen light would be on, and whatever room was adjacent to it.

She certainly couldn’t imagine him caring about how she was faring in the cold, she had barely spoken to  
the man half a dozen times since moving in.

She bent over to quickly gather her spilled groceries and tossed them into her open door. She lugged  
several logs of the firewood into the house, one at a time, as inconspicuously as she could. Regardless of  
who had left it, she was grateful. It wasn't a mystery she was going to solve that night, not if she wanted  
to eat her mac and cheese and watch the girl from Full House marry the millionaire heir to a Christmas  
tree farm, as ludicrous as that was.

Mac and cheese placed in the oven, her terrible holiday movie channel put on and paused, Christine  
jogged upstairs to put on her fuzzy socks. She was still ruminating on her mysterious firewood giver as  
she exited the bathroom, when her attention was caught by the light of her neighbor’s backyard.

He was bringing in several logs of his own, and Christine watched him as he crossed through his kitchen  
several times, the lines of his back flexing through the thin t-shirt he wore, before closing the sliding door  
and turning out the yard light. The pretty little cat was sitting on the kitchen counter, evidently waiting for  
him, and she watched as he retrieved something from his refrigerator for her. The cat was rearing up  
before he’d even made it back to the counter, and Christine laughed the spoiled little feline’s greedy  
display

The sound startled her. How long had been since she had laughed? Not the forced, self-deprecating  
grimace/chuckle that had become her norm, but an actual, unselfconscious laugh? She couldn’t  
remember. It’s not like she had anything to laugh about, not when her life was such a shitshow, and not  
like she’d had anyone to laugh with...

The stupid “gifts of the season” letter crossed her mind then and her eyes narrowed. The note had been  
written in a thin, spidery hand, which didn’t denote itself to being especially masculine OR feminine...she  
was the “neighbor on the left,” but why would he even participate in the stupid cul-de-sac game? Not  
when he disliked Christine so much, for ample reason...

She turned away, pushing the thought of her odd neighbor and his funny little cat out of her mind. It  
didn’t matter. He didn't like her, and that was fine. He was probably a jerk anyways, and she’d sworn off  
even being nice to men after her year.

It wasn’t until she was back on the sofa, settling into the ass-groove she’d created since summer, wrapped  
in her fluffy throw blanket with her mind-numbing holiday movie and mac and cheese, a warm fire  
crackling in the grate, that she realized she hadn’t even noticed if her neighbor’s face had been covered.


	2. Chapter 2

Two hours after giving the entire block a free show at her window, Christine and her capon were both scrubbed clean. 

She’d diffused her dark blonde curls until they bounced, soft and gleaming down her back. Her makeup had taken forever, as out of practice as she was, but she’d managed a little liquid eyeliner and mascara, and a touch of color to her cheeks. New year, new you.

Standing in her bra and panties, well away from her window this time, she hesitated in front of her open closet. Peering at the contents with a stranger’s eyes, Christine chewed her lip in indecision. It had been so long since she’d worn any of these things, her professional wardrobe, the wardrobe of Mrs. Christine Daaé, Curriculum Director for Musical Enrichment at the Horizon School for the Arts. She hadn’t been that person for so long, she had no idea how she would dress for Christmas Eve.

Instead, she turned slowly to her small bureau, where the spa-blue sweater still rested in its festive box.

~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~

The sweater had been wrapped in a shiny silver paper, the edges folded and taped with the precision of a high end department store’s seasonally-hired elf. Christine had brought it into the house suspiciously after finding it sitting on top of her stack of Amazon boxes at the door, just a few days earlier. She’d gasped in surprise when the box inside the wrapping paper really was from a high end department store. The cashmere sweater was kitten-soft, the color of an endless summer sky. A gift receipt was tucked inside a small, foiled green envelope, matching the stationary that had been on her woodpile. 

It had truly appeared on her doorstep on the perfect day. Her attorney had contacted her several days prior, and that day she’d gone to meet with him. 

“You know this is coming from the old lady, right?” Herb had asked her as she sat twisting her fingers, trying to absorb everything he’d told her. 

Her alimony was being contested, alimony she hadn’t even wanted to accept before a lunch spent with Meg and her mother, when both women had spent the entire afternoon banging angrily on the table and forbidding Christine from being stupid enough to walk away from “making that cheating son of of a bitch pay.”

In the end, she’d taken the alimony, a hidden blessing when she lost her job shortly after the divorce was finalized. Now her university sweetheart, the man whom she’d made sandcastles with at the seashore when they were just children was getting remarried and no longer felt obligated to support the ex-wife he’d cheated on and discarded, just one year ago. 

Or, at least, his mother no longer felt obligated, to Herb’s point. Raoul had always been extremely sweet-natured and needy; it was hardly any wonder he’d strayed when Christine didn't have the time or energy to devote to him once her father was sick, but she couldn't see him doing this. This was a power move that stank of her former mother-in-law.

“Too bad. He was with his mistress the morning I buried my father, left me two weeks before Christmas. His older brother has senate ambitions, you remind them of that. I might never go back to work, Herb.”

Herb, an unassuming-looking man who had been a good friend of her father’s, whose average, middle-aged dad looks hid his inner shark-like tendencies in the courtroom, grinned at her words. 

“That’s my girl.”

She’d texted Meg, who’d already been blowing up Christine’s phone with messages of angry solidarity all morning, on her way home, after her little breakdown detour. Once she’d left Herb’s office, her anger faded, and the crushing cloud of despair that always seemed to hover over her lately enveloped her in its heavy, thick confines. She’d pulled into the parking lot behind a bank, unable to keep the tears at bay or the tremor from her hands, and sobbed into her steering column for what felt like hours. 

Raoul was getting remarried, had walked out of her life and moved on with his own as easily as changing his clothes. She didn’t even really care about the marriage part of it, any residual feelings of affection she’d been harboring for her ex had withered and died when it had come out during the divorce proceedings exactly where he’d been the morning she’d been losing her mind in grief at the church. 

She’d eventually composed herself enough to drive home, and had tapped out a message to Meg as she sat at the light, waiting to turn onto her little cul-de-sac.

 _It’s official. Men are fucking cancelled_.

She’d done her best to try and drive into the same tire tracks she’d already created, and once she’d picked her way across her treacherous driveway, she'd seen the Amazon pantry box sitting on the porch, the silver-wrapped present on top.

Christine had sat on her sofa staring at the sweater for a long time. The firewood had only been the start. The cookies had come a few days after the wood, in a festive tupperware container. Inside the bag with the container of cookies had been a plain, white, oversized mug from Starbucks, stuffed with packets of hot chocolate and a tiny bottle of Jameson. Christine had groaned as she bit into a cookie that night, after filling her mug of spiked hot chocolate with a topping of gooey marshmallows, unable to remember the last time she’d had a homemade cookie. 

She idly wondered if she had been witness to their creation. She’d gotten in the habit of taking her evening shower a bit later each night, to better coincide with spying on the man next door as he cooked dinner. Unlike her own diet of takeout and prepared food from the freezer case, her neighbor actually made himself real food, like a grownup, she’d noted a bit ruefully. It was always dinner for one, with the little cat perched in her customary spot on the counter as he worked.

Christine hated to admit it, but knowing that he was eating alone made her feel better about her own solitary meals, in a twisted, pathetic way.

After the cookies, there had been the quintessential “things girls like” gift bag housing a cozy-smelling candle from the lotion store at the mall and an accompanying gift card. She had laughed that night--another one of those rare, genuine laughs--as she lit the candle, envisioning her quiet neighbor and his cat perusing the candles together, the feisty little feline having the ultimate say so in their purchase.

It wasn’t until she’d settled into her nest of blankets that she realized she didn’t even think about his face in her imaginings.

The sweater, though...the sweater had seemed incredibly personal. _And expensive_ , she told herself. Although, it was the holidays and every store was running sales... _maybe he had a coupon_ , she thought, knowing how absurd that was.

It had fit her like a glove, falling to the top of her hip with a slightly scooped neckline. After starting at it resting in the shimmery tissue paper, the little foil green envelope tucked into the folds, she had decided that he’d gone through the trouble of picking it out for her, and it would be rude to not accept it. And, if she was being very honest with herself, it was nice knowing that there was someone thinking about her this holiday, particularly the man next door.

.  
.

It had started after she'd begun watching him cook. 

He was loose and relaxed in his kitchen, so very unlike the tense, angry man she’d encountered outside. She found she loved watching as he chopped and stir fried vegetables in a big wok, as he plated himself chicken breast and asparagus, or as he talked to his cat as he put together a tray of lasagna.

She had loved to cook, once. She had numerous fond memories of cooking with her father when she was young, of helping Mamma V bake, and of making shared dinners with her roommates at university--boisterous, noisy nights in the kitchen, laughing and loving life. Raoul had always preferred going out to eat, and now that she was alone...cooking for one seemed like a needless waste of time. Besides, she’d grown up with the tradition of making food as an expression of love and caring...she wasn’t interested in cooking for herself.

She’d already taken note of her neighbor’s inconsistent comings and goings, like the way he wouldn’t seem to leave the house for days at a time. On the days he did leave, once or twice a week, he was always dressed professionally. She never saw him outside of course, as the garage door on his house would rise and his sleek car would pull out, occurring in reverse when he would return later that day, but she would see him in his kitchen, shrugging out of a suit jacket or loosening a tie.

He obviously worked from home, she’d determined. Christine had been delighted to learn that she was not the only person on the block who wore “daytime pajamas,” as she’d spied him on numerous occasions in a t-shirt and lounge pants in the middle of the afternoon. 

The first time she’d almost been caught at her window habit coincided with the first she’d seen him wander into his kitchen shirtless. He was very slim, but roped in tightly defined, sinewy muscle, and she'd felt a shiver of “I haven't had sex in over a year and this is how I spend my time now,” lust ripple through her. The hard plane of his abdomen tapered to slim hips, upon which his grey checked pajama pants had sat dangerously low. 

After flipping on his coffee machine, he’d raised his hands over his head in a stretch, arching his back. The pants slipped a little lower, and Christine hadn’t been able to help the way her eyes had zeroed in on the trail of dark hair, its meridian just barely out of sight...his arms had dropped to his side just as her forehead had touched upon the glass of her window. 

His body had turned in the direction of her house and his head had raised, and she’d dropped like a stone to the ground. She was confident he hadn’t seen her, but it was far too close for her comfort. Her cheeks were heated, and she felt vaguely disappointed that… _that what, Christine? That he didn’t come into the kitchen naked, with his dick swinging for your enjoyment? You’re a peeping Tom_! Jumping to her feet on the other side of the window, she turned and doubled back, walking back and forth in front of it several times. _There. Now he’ll just think your a weirdo who paces in her hallway_.

In addition to being the first time she’d seen her neighbor half naked, it was also the first time she’d been able to see the extent of his deformity, which appeared, to her eyes, to be a severe burn. She had become quite accustomed to the sight of his face, for as often as she’d watched him from her window. The burn extended down his jaw and neck, moving across his shoulder and chest on the left side of his body, and she wondered sadly, not for the first time, what had happened to him, and if he’d had anyone to take care of him when this terrible injury had occurred. 

That night she’d slept fitfully, waking with a start from a highly erotic dream, in which a man with a deep, resonant voice like melted chocolate had been asking her why she was such a naughty girl, arching the hard plane of his body as he took her from behind. She’d peeled herself out of the sweaty sheets after several long, gasping moments, unable to ignore the pulsing tingle between her thighs as she fetched her vibrator from the nightstand.

.  
.

Christine hadn’t fully admitted to herself what was going on until the night there had been a car in her neighbor’s driveway. 

Her gift that morning had been a plush, soft grey scarf with pretty spa-blue edging that matched the sweater. It had been a miserable evening the night before, as she had fielded a phone call from a University friend whom she hadn’t seen in ages, over the rapidly spreading news over her ex-husband’s newly engaged status. Jammes, one of the girls from those magical undergrad days of late-night pizza making in their quad, had heard it from someone in her husband’s circle of friends that the elaborate public engagement had taken place at the country club to which Raoul’s family belonged; that they all seemed content to pretend that his short-lived marriage to Christine was a “starter” marriage, and that he was marrying amongst his own kind, at long last.

She’d curled up in her bed that night and cried until her head throbbed, not entirely sure why she was crying, she certainly didn’t want him back...the knowledge that everyone seemed content to forget about her hurt though, hurt deeply. Loving Raoul had been easy--he was sweet and easy going, with a ready smile for all. 

She remembered a conversation had with her school guidance counselor when she was in the seventh grade and had neglected to do half of the semester’s worth of homework, despite being a bright, eager student in class.

“Your problem isn’t that your dumb, Christine. It's that you're lazy,” the woman had said bluntly, cutting off her half-hearted protests that she just didn’t understand the coursework--an obvious lie. The truth stung, but it didn’t make it less true, she thought. She’d always picked the easy way, and marrying Raoul had been easy, even when she’d known from the start that their aspirations weren’t compatible, that his family didn’t approve of her.

No, she didn’t want Raoul back, but she wanted to matter to someone. The invisibility she’d felt since her move suffocated her nearly as much as her grief sometimes, and there was no one there to hear, no one there to care.

When she'd opened her door the next morning to lug in another piece of firewood, her eyes still feeling puffy from last night’s self-indulgent misery, she had found the wrapped box, leaning against her door.

The scarf hadn’t been an exact match to the sweater, the color was off by the barest hint, but that only made it more precious to her. It was soft and cuddly, like her warmest blanket, and the fact that the color was so close to her sweater meant he had really put in effort to match the blues as best he could, had made an effort for her. Someone was thinking of her, even if it was someone she’d barely exchanged a handful of words with, and none of them pleasant. 

Christine had sunk in her ass-groove amidst her nest of blankets that morning with the scarf wrapped around her shoulders, nuzzling its softness as she watched her morning Christmas dreck. She would make him Mamma V’s fruitcake, she’d decided. It was still a few days before Christmas, she had time to soak the fruit and get it in the oven. She’d deliver it with instructions to not eat for at least several weeks to let the holiday treat mellow and cure, knowing the results would be worth it.

It was with this decision that she left the house with an excited purpose, for the first time in she couldn’t remember how long. The grocery store had an attached state liquor agency, so she was able to purchase the alcohol she needed, as well as the fruit and nuts, flour and baking soda and mace, as well as Mamma V’s secret ingredient. She knew no one but that PTA busybody would bother with the time consuming process, and she wanted to get everything just right. While there, she spied the capon in the case next to the pile of much less expensive turkeys, and decided to splurge for the meal she was to make for herself and Meg on Christmas Eve. 

As she approached her house upon her return, the sight of a car in the driveway next door startled her so much she overshot her turn slightly, missing her established wheel wells. In the four months since she’d lived next door, her neighbor had never had a guest. As she picked her way across the jagged peaks of ice and snow in her own driveway with her grocery bags, she eyed the strange car suspiciously. 

It’s presence in the driveway next door was pushed from her mind as she prepared her fruit for soaking in the rum and brandy. Inspired by her neighbor’s culinary habits, she also pulled out the fresh produce she’d purchased for her own dinner. It wasn’t until later on, when she’d opened the front door again for another piece of firewood, that she’d seen the car still there. 

A peculiar sensation prickled up Christine’s spine. She prepared dinner mechanically, with a twist in her gut and the same prickling sensation at her back. Finally, she could take no more and went upstairs to her hall window. The kitchen was empty, but Christine spied a wine bottle on the counter. After an interminable amount of time, her neighbor entered the room. 

He wore a dark red button down shirt with dark jeans, and Christine thought he looked nice, although this was certainly not his normal manner of dress. His face, she noticed immediately, was covered in the compression mask she’d seen him wearing before, when he’d return from whatever office he went into once a week. When she saw he carried two wine glasses, the twist in her stomach was joined by a twist at her heart. 

A date. He had a date over.

Christine moved mechanically down the steps, away from the window, before she saw anymore, before she saw the woman he must have been entertaining. She sat on her sofa, her dinner forgotten, staring into the fireplace with tears coursing down her cheeks. 

She liked him, she’d realized. She’d developed a crush on her neighbor, just based off what she had witnessed through her window, through spying on him, which she knew was ridiculous. She was an idiot. This man couldn’t stand her, went out of his way to avoid her, she reminded herself.

 _So fucking stupid, Christine_.

She was pulled from her reverie by a sound at her back door. The fire had burned low in the grate, as she’d sat in her stupor, and Christine realized she had no idea how long she’d been sitting there. The low scratching noise made her jump, and she’d approached the door cautiously. The little cat from next door mewed up plaintively from the dark patio, and as Christine opened the door, the furry visitor hurried inside.

“Well, just make yourself at home,” she muttered, closing the sliding door. “I guess he forgot about both of us, huh? Well...I suppose you can hang out for a little while. Maybe he’s getting lucky. We don’t want you to be scarred for life if you walk into a delicate situation.”

When she woke the next morning, she’d still been on the sofa in her living room, her neighbor’s cat curled in a ball at her side.

Shit. She’d finally managed to steal his cat after all.

“Your daddy is going to be so mad at you,” she murmured as she gathered the little feline into her arms after splashing some water on her face and fixing her hair. Her driveway had seemed extra treacherous that morning, and she cursed herself for the the hundredth time for not cleaning out the garage over the summer so that her car could be parked inside.

The front of the house appeared as dark and closed off as ever, and Christine was unsurprised when no one responded to her knock. The car was still there, she’d noted glumly. She stayed the night, whoever she was. Christine walked up the little path on the side of the her neighbor’s house until she reached the backyard, the scene of their disastrous first meeting. Swallowing what was surely her heart, she stepped up to the stone terrace and rapped on the glass of his sliding kitchen door.

A man’s head popped around the corner of the kitchen with wide, surprised eyes, but it was not her neighbor. He was very handsome, Christine noted immediately, with thick, lustrous black hair and a strong jaw. The man said something over his shoulder and then there he was, her neighbor, shoving past the other man roughly, his eyes narrowed.

They widened when they saw Christine standing there, shooting her a look she could only describe as wounded before dropping to the cat, narrowing once more. They were a symphony of rapid expression, those eyes, and as he raised them back to Christine, tugging open the door, they once again pinned her with wounded hurt.

Soft brown, she saw, very light, with a fringe of dark lashes. She had wondered endlessly about his eye color as she watched him all those nights.

“She came to my door,” she blurted quickly, once the door was open. “I swear I wasn’t trying to steal her this time.” His lips were pressed in a grim line, but she thought she saw a twitch of a smile.

“Why, Bibi? WHY are you so bad?” he lectured the little cat, who was struggling to free herself from Christine’s arms now that he was within reach. She leaned forward to deliver the bundle of squirming claws and tawny-colored fur to him with a little laugh.

The laugh stuttered and died in her throat when her hand dragged against his as the cat was passed between them. It was like an electrical shock; she stiffened and drew in a sharp breath at the current she felt move through her, and the wounded look returned to his eyes.

 _No, no! Don’t let him think you’re afraid! a voice in her head screamed_ , and Christine stepped forward, desperate to follow the voice’s orders, laying a soft hand at his elbow.

“She just wanted to come visit,” she squeaked out, reaching her other hand out to the cat, who promptly headbutted Christine’s outstretched palm. “Don’t be mad at her.”

His eyes widened again slightly, the hurt look replaced by one of surprise before they dropped again to the scarf wrapped at her neck. There was a definite hint of a smile on his thins lips then, and Christine felt her stomach bunch, desperate to cage in the butterflies that were seeking an escape route. When his eyes raised back to hers, they were infinitely softer.

“You should have told me you were expecting company,” a voice drawled from over her neighbor’s shoulder

The spell was broken, and she let her hand fall away from his arm as he turned to glare angrily at the handsome, dark-haired man. The cat sprang from his arms and shot down the hallway in a pale-colored burst as he rounded on the man. 

“This is your fault! I told you that she likes to get out, to not stand there with the door open. And what did you do? Stand there for ten god damned minutes like you were trying to heat the outside.” Beneath the thin compression mask, which was made of some breathable material, she could see now, his forehead visibly bunched as he scowled.

“Well, I suppose it’s a good thing there were reinforcements, hmm?” The man turned to Christine, his jade green eyes twinkling with mischief. His wide smile revealed a row of even teeth, blindingly white against his dark copper skin. “You must be the pretty neighbor? The cat thief?”

Christine felt a dull flush creep up her neck at his words, and took an embarrassed step back. “She really did come scratching at my door last night. It--it was so cold, and I didn't mean to fall asleep…”

“Last night!” Her neighbor turned to glare at the laughing man once more before shifting in the doorway, preventing the man from being able to see where Christine stood. “Thank you for taking care of her,” he said in a quiet voice, meant only for her ears, and she shivered at its low sensuousness. 

“I-It’s no problem. If you ever need a cat sitter, you know where to find me, Mr.--” she trailed off, embarrassed that she didn't even know his name.

“...Erik. Just Erik.”

His eyes were soft again, as she repeated his name back softly, tasting it on her lips, learning the shape of it. “Erik...I’m Christine.”

“Well...thank you again...Christine.”

She wasn't entirely sure how she’d arrived back to her house that day, Christine assumed she must have floated, for somehow she had been in her living room, unable to wipe the smile from her face.

_Erik_

She’d felt her chest tight with excitement and energy so powerful it threatened to split her in two, and so she did what she had always done when she’d felt restless or nervous or excited in the past. 

She sang. 

A few simple art songs to warm up, then one of the “26 hits” that all vocal majors could sing in their sleep. Once she’d finished the Pergolesi, she launched into the Jewel Song, Marguerite’s aria in Faust, a role she had played in school, throwing open the back door as she did so. The cold was bracing, and cooled the heat she felt burning in her cheeks.

 _Est-ce toi, Marguerite, est-ce toi_?

She had a name; a lovely masculine name, and had given him hers. It was a start!

 _Réponds, réponds, réponds vite_!

She trilled through the aria, a song in her heart for the first time in months, unaware that the man next door had come outside, following the sound of her voice as it tripped easily through the notes. 

It had been a good day, she had thought triumphantly.

 

.

~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~.~~~~.~~~~.~~~~

.

 

Christine stood in her bedroom now, feeling far less merry than she had that day, only a few days prior, she realized. She stared at the sweater once more. She wanted to look good today, but maybe more than that, she wanted to _feel_ good. She’d felt like garbage for so long, as her charmed life had collapsed into the current shitshow in which she found herself. So much for Christmas miracles. The sweater made her feel good; made her feel pretty, and cared for, and she desperately needed that today.

She slipped it over her head, marveling once more over its softness, pairing it with a pair of fitted dark jeans. The jeans used to hug her curves, curves that had deflated over the past year, but still...she looked nice, and wouldn't appear to be in such a sorry state when Meg arrived. She turned in the mirror, appraising her appearance. The sweater wasn’t particularly festive for Christmas Eve, but it brought out her eyes, making them sparkle...she wondered if he’d considered her coloring when picking it out, before berating herself for the foolish thought.

The bird, meanwhile, rested in its crust of rosemary and salt in the refrigerator. The potatoes were peeled and quartered, bobbing in a pot of water, and her celery and onions were sauteed for the stuffing. Unfortunately, the orange she'd found rolling around the top shelf in the fridge was as dessicated as a mummy. Deciding that having a freshly zested orange for her cranberries was too important a component to skip, she bundled up to make a quick run to the grocery store, before everything closed early for the holiday. 

There was no little gift waiting on her small porch, she noticed immediately, and Christine paused in disappointment. 

_Disappointed, really? You've been a mostly terrible neighbor, you’ve had exactly one civil half-conversation with him, and now you're disappointed that he's not thinking about you on Christmas? You really are a silly bitch, Christine._

Navigating carefully down the steps, she prepared to make the treacherous journey to her car. She’d been pulling over the snow in her driveway for the past month, rather than disposing of it like a normal, functional adult, which she currently was not. Her avoidance had created overlapping wheel wells of compressed snow that were now sharp and icy. After her fall yesterday, she’d vowed not to leave the house until it had all melted away. Seeing now that it wasn’t a feasible plan, she took a deep breath and clung to the hood of her car. As soon as she stepped carefully around the front of her small SUV, she stopped again. 

The driveway was completely clean, down to the concrete and sprinkled with salt, save for whatever snow she was parked on. He must have started with her driveway before doing his own, she thought. That explained why she’d heard the obnoxious _scraaaaping so early_. 

_You did fall like a lummox right in front of him, idiot._

It was no wonder he’d shoveled her driveway out, he was probably worried she’d fall and break her neck and be buried in a snowdrift, that her decaying corpse wouldn’t be found until all the snow melted, lowering his property value. 

_Or he’s just a nice guy and you’re an asshole._

She pursed her lips, knowing it was true. As she backed out of the clean driveway, Christine wondered what was the point in trying to be a “new her” in the new year, when she was so tired of being herself in the first place. 


	3. Chapter 3

The day after she’d learned his name, Christine bounced out of bed, eager to face the morning for the first time in almost a year. Through her windows, she could see a sliver of sunlight cutting through the December gloom, mirroring her hopeful mood.

Her thoughts buzzed as she lathered her hair in the shower, wondering if he liked the smell of coconut. As she ran a loofah over her arms, she contemplated what he would smell like, if she buried her face in the crook of his long neck. Clean and crisp, like juniper and mint, she was convinced. 

She wondered if the little cat’s name had any significance, as she towled herself dry, wondered who the dark-haired visitor was. His car had disappeared from the driveway about an hour or so after Christine had returned the cat, and had not returned. 

There had a heart-stopping moment of panic when she realized her first assumption, that he was a date who’d spent the night, could possibly still be the case, but dismissed the notion after a moment. Her neighbor, Erik, hadn’t seemed especially happy with the man’s presence, had snapped at him with too much irritance for it to have been a romantic entanglement. 

_Falling for a gay guy would be typical with your luck_ … Christine shushed the negative voice in her head for a change and tried to focus on the positive.

She knew his name, which was more than she knew yesterday, she reminded herself. Christine appreciated its compact, unaffected nature, so unlike the Lawtons and Jeffersons and Whitakers she’d been surrounded by with Raoul’s circle of friends. 

_Erik_

Simple and masculine. Christine liked the way it moved in her mouth, like a soft sigh, before its crisp denouement. 

He knew her name now, as well. He’d placed equal emphasis on each syllable, skating on the sibilant s that joined them.

She wanted to hear him say it again.

She’d replayed the dark-haired man’s words over and over in her head.

 _You must be the pretty neighbor? The cat thief_?

Did that mean _he_ was calling her pretty? Or was he parroting back words that _Erik_ had said? Had he been talking about her? _A cat thief, that’s what he thinks of you_ , she thought with a flush. Well, at least he thought she was a _pretty_ cat thief. 

The notion that Erik might have called her pretty made her feel as though her toes were barely touching the ground as she drifted down the hall to her bedroom with a small smile.

Christine imagined what their next conversation might be about as set to accomplishing some cleaning; wondered if he liked music or if his eyes would glaze over when she spoke of the Operas she loved, the way Raoul’s always had. She wanted to know what he did for a living, what went on in the room attached to kitchen, where the lights were on for half the night.

She considered what she’d say when he asked what she did for a living…

 _Oh, me? I watch bad television and eat frozen pizza and live off other people’s money, like the drain on society I am_. 

She’d had the sinking suspicion that conversation would likely be their last. Honesty would likely not be the best policy either…

 _My father died and sometimes I miss him so much I can’t breathe. My husband threw me away like an old newspaper at the lowest point in my life, and then I lost my job all within five months. Now I just count the minutes until each day is over and dread the next one beginning_.

Shit.

Christine hoisted herself to her feet. She’d been scrubbing her bathroom clean, a chore she’d been putting off for weeks, but today seemed like a day to get things done, to start improving her circumstances. Not having tangles of her long hair all over the floor was a good place to start. She’d just sprayed down the tub with a mixture of baking soda and vinegar, and let it work its sizzling magic as she went back to her room for her laptop.

The thought of finding a new job was daunting at best. The half a year she’d been unemployed felt like a lifetime, and Christine wasn’t sure how to make herself seem like an attractive candidate again. _Don’t be stupid, you have your masters, you have a great looking resume, you need to not be such a wuss_.

In truth, she’d lucked into her job at the charter school in the first place, and the novelty of spending corporate money meant she was given a promotion and a title that far outmatched her experience. _You should just start subbing, you should have been doing that since September_. The voice in her head was right, she decided, clicking over to the public school district’s website.

By the time she made it downstairs for the first time that morning, it was not quite eleven a.m. but she’d accomplished more in the several hours she’d been up than she had in over a month. 

The kitchen light next door was still dark, and she gave it a fond smile as she passed on her way downstairs. He usually didn’t make his first appearance until after noon, still in pajamas, typically shirtless, to her delight. 

_He’s not a morning person, that’s another thing you know_. 

The lights in his house would remain on long after she went to bed at night, and the knowledge that he was awake just next door had become something of a security blanket.

That afternoon she cleaned the kitchen and sang through the repertoire from her graduate recital. Gilda’s _Caro nome_ , Baby Doe, and the Jewel Song once more. Then a Ricky Ian Gordon song cycle, a little Barber, a little Menotti…

It was in the high forties that day, practically summertime compared to the arctic blast the city had been hunkered against for the past several weeks, and she’d kept the glass kitchen door open, so that she wasn't overwhelmed by cleaning fumes as she worked. 

The cleaning had been exhausted long before her repertoire, so she mopped the dining room floor before moving onto the living room. Carpets were vacuumed, shelves were dusted, the piles of junk mail she’d been allowing to build on the coffee table disposed of.

By the time she’d sung though Vanessa’s aria about the always approaching winter, it was nearly one o’clock, and the whole house sparkled. Christine stood back and admired her handiwork, again reflecting that she’d done more in one day than she had since moving in.

She’d probably missed catching him in his pajamas, she thought, heading back upstairs to rinse down the tub. No matter. She’d seen the long, lean expanse of him enough times at that point that she could close her eyes and envision him clearly, had done exactly that on more than one occasion, particularly when she was alone in her bed at night. 

Christine knew precisely where the scars started on his chest, how they snaked up his shoulder and neck before spreading to his ruined face. 

She wondered endlessly about the texture difference of his skin. Standing before him when she'd returned the cat, she’d gotten a good look at his right side, as he’d angled himself subtly. The skin on the right side of his throat had been smooth and unencumbered, with a slight hint of stubble. Just left of his bobbing adam’s apple she’d been able to see the start of the scarring. She wondered if it still pained him, and what the livid red of his burns would feel like beneath her lips.

She had fixated on that dark trail of hair that started at his navel, disappearing into his pajama pants every time she'd seen him shirtless. 

Aside from certain _suppositions_ she'd made to herself on what she might find, should she ever be granted the opportunity to follow that trail with fingers and tongue, Christine realized she was so accustomed to the sight of his smooth, bare head that she’d never really considered that he’d probably had a full head of hair before his accident. 

She’d tried to imagine what he would have looked like with messy dark hair tumbling over his forehead, into his light brown eyes. Perhaps a bit more boyish, not as hard, although she suspected she would prefer him the way he was. 

Christine had never considered herself a superficial person. Raoul had been incredibly handsome in a classic, country club way, but that was never the reason she was with him, even after they’d reconnected in school. 

Erik's injuries were terrible, his appearance truly horrific upon first viewing...but it wasn't something he had control over, clearly, and now that she was used to it, she found that she didn't dwell upon the way he looked. 

Instead, she wondered if he'd been alone when whatever had happened...happened. Had there been someone to hold his hand in the hospital? Help him change dressings and apply salves and medications? Had he woken from nightmares of his terrible accident with someone there to soothe him, or alone in an empty house?

The awareness of his injuries seemed somehow less important to Christine than the knowledge that he carried a great deal of stress in his shoulders, and was constantly rolling his neck and stretching. 

The extent of his disfigurement paled in comparison to knowing how he took his coffee. Every time she was able to learn something new about him, she filed it away, happy to have him become more of a real person in her head.

As she came up on her little window, a smile already finding its way to her face, she stopped short. The kitchen was still dark, with no signs of life or movement.

This was certainly unlike him, Christine mused. Her neighbor was a creature of habit, which is how she managed to watch him so efficiently. He was up by noon on the days he was home, groggily starting his coffee as he leaned against the counter in his pajamas. 

Christine didn’t make a habit of spying on him during the afternoons, because she’d learned he would only reappear periodically to fetch something to drink or a quick snack from his refrigerator. Whatever he did in that other, adjacent room of his house kept his attention for the full day, and it wasn’t until late evening that she would be treated to the show of his meal prep.

For him to still be in bed this late in the day...Christine wondered if he was possibly sick. _Maybe it really was a date, and he’s worn out_. She huffed in annoyance at the voice in her head. It was not a date, she told herself firmly, moving on from the hall, thinking that maybe she’d try to unearth some Christmas decorations.

.  
.

When Christine had been young, Christmas had held an exceptionally magical place in her heart. Her father had been a violinist, and in lieu of a sitter they couldn’t afford, she would attend the Christmas concerts at the symphony hall every weekend, never tiring of hearing the giant chorale singing the Messiah, or seeing the ballerinas twirl in their icy white sugar plum fairy costumes. 

She herself had sung in the children’s choir, graduating on to the symphony’s youth orchestra when she was old enough, even having a solo or two every year. Daddy had taught at the community college during the day, and Christine had let herself into the house every afternoon after walking home from her choir rehearsal at school, content to be alone for a few hours before her father was done with classes. 

In December, she’d be in charge of decorating inside the house for Christmas, and would use the time she had alone to put ornaments on their little tree, with a Christmas movie playing in the background. She would marvel over the tiny, painted figurines that had been her mother’s, objects and memories her father would have preferred to keep tucked away out of sight, but in those hours when she was alone with nothing but Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit for company, her mother’s things came out and were hung with excruciating care.

Christine may have spent a lot of time alone as a child, but it had never felt that way, especially at Christmas time. Her mother, dead since she was just a baby, was an angel, her father had always told her. A beautiful angel who always watched over her, and Christine had liked to pretend that the angel on the top of their tree, in a shimmery white dress edged in tiny white lights, was her mother, watching over the family Christmas, keeping an eye over the daughter who didn’t even remember what she had looked like.

As she lugged a box up the dank basement stairs, _waterproofing the house was also on your list this summer, dummy_ , she hoped that the contents would be enough to fill her with the holiday spirit she’d been sorely lacking up til that point.

Her hopes were dashed when the very first thing she pulled from the box was a framed Christmas photograph of her with her father. It had been taken at one of the holiday concerts, for she was in her green plaid dress with the puffed sleeves and red sash. The stood on the grand staircase, a brightly lit Christmas tree in the background, her father in his tuxedo, his violin at his side in one hand, his other wrapped around her scrawny adolescent shoulders. 

The sight of his face, ruddy and smiling, so full of life and pride and happiness, was like a punch to the gut, and Christine doubled over as a fist of grief connected with her. 

She wondered, as she lay on her sofa several hours later in a puffy-eyed lump of tears and snot and throbbing temples, if the day would ever come when the pain wouldn’t be this raw, when she wouldn’t miss him so very much. It had just been the two of them for so long, and even after she was married, Christine still spoke to her father daily, saw him on weekends. She didn’t know how to exist in the world without his strong, comforting presence. It was hard to believe in angels that year, hard to believe there was anyone watching over her, not when she hurt so deeply.

 _So much for Christmas spirit_  
.  
.

When she dragged herself up the stairs that evening, hours after bringing up and promptly abandoning the Christmas box, she was relieved to see the lights next door on. It was a good thing she’d been so productive that morning, she thought as she seated herself on the little stool she kept off to the side of the window. She’d lost the entire afternoon and evening to that tidal wave of crippling grief, getting nothing more accomplished. 

The sight of Erik and his funny little cat would be a welcome bit of brightness after her tears.

She went through her email as she waited for him to appear, deleting entire rows without bothering to click any of them open, responded to a text from Meg that had come while she’d been weeping on her sofa, clutching the picture of her father to her chest. 

_Just yourself_! she responded to Meg’s query of what she ought to bring to dinner on Christmas Eve. 

When her friend had made the suggestion of spending the evening with Christine, she was initially grateful, but as the weeks dragged on, Meg’s incredibly kind offer had been tainted by her own depression, and her gratitude had soured. 

_You’re an obligation. Everyone just feels bad for you_.

Christine shook her head, trying to physically expel the negative thoughts from her mind. Meg was her best friend, after all. It wouldn’t be fair to ruin her Christmas just because Christine was stuck in permanent Grinch mode.

She realized with a start that she had been sitting at the window for a good long while at this point, and her neighbor had never materialized. As she watched, she spotted the little cat enter the room. Christine waited for Erik to follow, but he never did. The cat, _Bebe, he called her_ , she reminded herself, drank from her water bowl for a few moments, before moving to the kitchen door, where she sat in stillness, peering out into the dark night beyond, likely plotting her next escape from the house.

Her master never appeared.

At length, Christine gave up her vigil. Tomorrow is a new day, she told herself as she prepared for bed. _Tomorrow you can get more cleaning done, you can look for a job, maybe sign up for some volunteer work. You’ll see him in his pajamas, watch him make dinner. It’ll be a good day_.

.  
.

His kitchen light was already on when she arose the next morning. Christine did a double take, going back to her room to check the time on her phone, concerned she’d slept the morning away. Nine forty two, way too early for him. She’d missed him in his pajamas, she realized with a pang, heading downstairs sadly. 

When she came upstairs late in the afternoon to put away the laundry she’d done, she saw immediately that the house next door was dark. 

_What the hell is he doing_?!

The laundry basket thunked to the floor, as she balled her fists in frustration. He always worked through the day, the lights were only off on the odd days when he left the house in his suit and tie. The lights stayed off for the rest of the day, and Christine couldn’t help feeling betrayed. 

She woke with a start in the middle of the night, breathless and trembling, the walls of her bedroom spinning around her as she shook away the dream. She’d not had this nightmare in many weeks, not since it had been replaced with the much more enjoyable dream of her neighbor. 

When her dreams starred Erik, they were unfailingly erotic, the sensuousness of his voice translating, in her unconscious mind, to skill in the bedroom. He would undress her slowly, kiss his way down her body, and take her on hands and knees, their bodies pressed together as his deep voice rumbled against her neck. Other times she would move her lips over his scarred shoulder and press his ruined face to her breasts, moaning out his name as they found ecstasy in each other.

That was not the dream she’d had that night. This nightmare was one Christine was unfortunately well-acquainted with, having had it for weeks after Raoul had left. 

In it, she was adrift on a rough sea. There were storm clouds in the distant horizon, and nothing but churning water surrounding her. Christine screamed and screamed, but there was never anyone there to hear her. There was no safe harbor, no port in the storm. She was utterly, devastatingly alone. 

The glowing face of her cell phone told her it was shortly after three a.m. Pulling herself out of bed, Christine stumbled down the dark hallway to the bathroom. The cool water she splashed on her face was enough to shock the remnants of the dream out of her system, although Christine couldn’t say for certain that her circumstances were much different upon waking. _Just a bit drier_.

The light at Erik’s house was on, she saw as she walked unsteadily back to her room, and her stomach clenched at the sight. It had been two days since she’d returned his cat, two days since she’d seen even a glimpse of him, and she wasn’t able to shake the feeling that his adjusted schedule was intentional. 

_He must have seen you, idiot. He figured out you’ve been spying him on him, and he’s going out of his way to avoid you_.

Her heart ached and her head was pounding. The man next door didn’t like her, and would never be interested in her, she told herself firmly. It was time to give up her silly fixation.

.  
.

 

The following morning, Christine woke up shivering. The short burst of unseasonable warmth was gone, and the temperature had dropped dramatically throughout the night. Her headache hadn’t completely gone away from the pre-dawn hours, and she trudged downstairs, studiously ignoring the window in her hallway. She had some errands to run, and needed to ensure she had everything she needed for her Christmas Eve dinner the following night with Meg.

As soon as she opened her front door, she wished she could simply go back to bed. The several days of warm weather had turned the jagged, icy peaks of her driveway into a watery mess, but now a shimmering coat of ice glazed over everything. _You are going to fall and slide under your car, and if you’re lucky, they’ll find your body by January_. 

Somehow, she’d managed to make it to her car in one piece, thinking it would probably be his little cat that would find her body. _She’ll eat your ear before telling him anything is wrong_. 

Several hours later, Christine returned, only to find the him in question backing into his own driveway. 

There were boxes once again stacked in front of his garage, preventing him from swiftly disappearing into its confines, she saw at once. Erik was already exiting his car as she turned into the ice rink masquerading as her driveway, and Christine expected him to quickly vanish, as he normally did. 

Instead, he was still standing next to his car as she opened her door, a small, hesitant smile on the only visible part of his face. 

She had previously noted, with a fair bit of annoyance, the speed and skill with how Erik backed into his driveway on the days he returned from wherever it was he worked. He’d done so again today, and her stomach bunched in nerves to see that her was just a few feet away as she stepped out of her car.

Christine heard his rich, mellifluous voice speaking to her, but never learned what it was he was saying. As she swung her car door shut, her foot slid over the icy lump of what had previously been her wheel well, and her ankle rolled. She brought her hands forward with a gasp, hoping to catch herself on her car, but her other worthless, treacherous foot chose that moment to slide as well. She really _was_ going to slip under her car, she realized in horror, as the ground rushed up to meet her.

Strong arms had locked around her, pulling her up and back, preventing her face from connecting with the side of her door and her ass from making painful contact with the icy pavement. Christine could feel her heart trying to burst through her throat, and she made a gasping squeal of distress at her near-miss. Erik’s arms stayed around her as she caught her breath, holding her tight to him.

“Are you okay?”

His voice, deep and warm and full of concern was at her ear, and Christine felt a tide of emotion begin to rise up around her.

 _No. She wasn’t okay. She hadn’t been okay in a long time_.

He had stepped through the narrow strip of snow-covered grass that separated their properties with lightning speed to catch her, she realized, and had dragged her back off of the ice. Her foot crunched through the glaze of ice atop the snow as she adjusted her stance, ensuring she had her footing. The arm around her loosened, although he still held fast to her.

Before either of them could say anything further, the slightly muffled sound of a cell phone cut through the silence, and Christine felt more than she heard his huff of annoyance. 

It was the ringing of the phone that undid her. 

_It’s probably his job, or his girlfriend, or boyfriend for that matter, or family, or friends, or, or, or_ …

Somewhere, a tiny, rational part of her brain knew she was being stupid, knew that he was just as alone as she was, albeit with slightly more adult habits. She’d seen the proof of that for countless weeks--his solitary meals, the car that wouldn’t leave the driveway for days at a time, the fact that he’d only had one visitor since Christine had lived next door…

But in that moment, her own depression and loneliness and sadness swallowed her and the tiny, rational voice in her head was drowned. _He’s been avoiding you for days and here you are, looking like a fool in front of him again. You’re a hot fucking mess, your life is in shambles, and there are better people who want his attention_. This wasn’t how their next meeting was supposed to go, she thought as heat flamed her face, a sure sign that tears would be quick to follow.

“Can you walk?” 

Erik had one hand at her waist, and the other at her elbow as she took a lurching step forward, crunching through the snow. She could feel the gentle pressure of his massive hand curled around her, and Christine wanted to lean into it, into him, before his next words brought her up short.

“You could really hurt yourself on this mess.”

Christine didn’t need to turn to face him, she hear the frown in his voice, knew his forehead would bunched under the mask and his eyes narrowed at the visible evidence of her ineptitude at being a responsible, functioning adult. She was sure he could feel her hitching breaths, she didn’t need to turn to let him see the tears that were already falling. 

The cellphone had begun to ring again, and Christine pulled herself free from his grasp. “I’m sorry,” she managed to choke out before lurching away from him, gripping the side of her car as she put as much distance as she could between them as quickly she as she could without falling again, before she began to sob in earnest. 

She chanced a single glance over her shoulder as she shoved her key into the lock. Erik still stood there in the space between their yards, mouth agape as he watched her retreating back. She was unable to tell his expression, as his features were completely hidden under the mask he always wore outside of the house. She imagined if she could see his face, there would be disgust there.

As she fumbled to open the inner storm door, she could hear his beautiful, dark voice again. He had finally answered his cell, and his voice--so full of genuine concern over her clumsiness only moments ago--rang with black fury. She caught the start of a profanity-laced tirade before the slam of his own front door thudded through her.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Christine dropped against the wood and sank to the ground as misery swallowed her.

It had not been a good day.

.  
.

She had decided, once she’d returned from the grocery store on Christmas Eve morning, to her clean house and pristine driveway, that she would be a champion of “fake it til you make it” thinking the rest of the day. She didn’t want to ruin Meg’s day, didn’t want to seem more pathetic than she actually was, which was plenty damned pathetic, she knew. The house was clean, meal was started, the driveway shoveled and safe for the first time that winter, thanks to him. 

She could do this.

Channeling the details-oriented planner that she’d once been, Christine moved about the kitchen ensuring the meal she’d be serving her friend was perfect, as she sipped at her glass of Sauternes.

The three bottles of wine had been an impulse purchase on the way to the register at the grocery store, along with a slightly decadent looking chocolate silk pie. Her capon was resting on the platter, golden brown, the mashed potatoes had been whipped with sour cream and a smash of garlic, and her stuffing, Mamma V’s recipe, was deliciously aromatic.

Meg had called as she was zesting the orange for the cranberries. 

.  
.

 

The sound of carolers pulled Christine from her stupor, hours later. She was sitting in her darkened living room, the only light coming from the crackling fire. The fire for which I have plenty of wood. She tugged her scarf around her shoulders and rose from the sofa, drifting to the front room so she could see the carolers. She took the wine.

Christine had assured her weeping friend that she understood, expressed her genuine concern, told Meg that she hoped Mrs. Giry wouldn’t be in the hospital too long, and that the girls would catch up after the holidays. 

After she’d hung up the phone, Christine robotically made sure the oven and stove top were both off before she turned out the light, plunging the kitchen into darkness. Pulling one of the wine bottles from her sack on the floor, she drifted into her dark living room where the small fire from that morning had been banked. After building up the embers with a piece of her newly acquired firewood, she’d dropped to the sofa and sat, staring blankly into the fire as night fell around her.

Now, gazing out the window at her front door, she could see snow falling softly outside. The carolers, whom she recognized as being the college students from two doors down had finished their song and began to move on to the next house. They sang Here We Come a’Wassailing as they walked, and Christine watched as they continued past Erik’s dark house, never slowing until they’d reached the neighbor to the left of their own house.

“But he’s home,” she called weakly to carolers, across her empty, dark foyer.  
Her heart twisted. She didn’t want to think about Erik that day, she reminded herself, didn’t want to think about him at all, not anymore. 

She wasn’t sure why she had expected things would be different on Christmas, she thought as she turned the deadbolt in her front door and turned away. Loneliness stretched in front her like that great ocean in her nightmares, with no end in sight. Christmas magic only existed in her stupid movies, and she was ready to leave her foolish hopes for a holiday miracle behind. 

She told herself that she didn’t want to think about Erik anymore, but that didn’t prevent her mind from continuing to replay the sight of the carolers, his other neighbors, walking past his house like it wasn’t even there...as if his house, and by extension the man inside it, were completely invisible. Christine reached the top of her stairs and turned automatically towards the small hall window out of habit.

After days of missing sight of him, there he was. Christine watched as he dropped a slice of bread into the toaster before rolling what she had come to think of as his “bad” shoulder. That he probably hurt when he shoveled your driveway at the crack of dawn. The cat was there on her perch at the side counter, and lifted her head greedily as he scratched her neck. Christine felt her heart twist and fold itself into a neat square as she watched him talk to the cat, bending to drop a kiss to the fuzzy little head before his toaster popped. 

Toast. He was making himself a piece of toast on Christmas Eve, with no one but his little cat for company, while she stood less than fifteen feet away, alone and feeling sorry for herself. There was an entire Christmas dinner growing cold downstairs on her counter top, she’d been prepared to throw away the whole lot in the morning.

Her year had been a disaster, no one could deny that, but she’d had Meg and her mother, her few friends from the school, her university girlfriends. Meanwhile, she was still waiting for a miracle to find her, waiting for the plot of one of her Hallmark movies to come to fruition while she sulked and sunk further into depression, pushing away people who genuinely cared about and the the little bits of good still in her life.

Something terrible had happened to the man next door, something dreadful and painful and life-altering, but he’d still found enough Christmas spirit to be a thoughtful, generous neighbor. He couldn't leave his house without a mask that covered his entire face. She couldn’t imagine how that ruined, melted face had changed his life, she thought, before stopping herself. 

_Don’t be such a dumb bitch, Christine...you don’t need to imagine it, dummy_. She knew the voice in her head was right, she saw the proof of how alone her neighbor was every day.

Alone, and probably lonely. 

_He’s as alone as you are. He’s a nice guy, and you like him_.

She watched as he stretched his arm back again and decided that she needed to stop waiting for a miracle to be handed to her. 

_This year, we make our own Christmas magic_.


	4. Chapter 4

The cold was sharp and stinging as it whipped at her face, and Christine hunched her shoulders against it. She’d already knocked twice.

 

_ He doesn’t want to be bothered, and you're the last person he'd want to see. Why don’t you just take a hint? _

 

Christine refused to indulge the lizard brain whose voice hissed in her ear, not anymore tonight. There'd been too much time lost to it already. 

 

Peeking around the side of the porch, she eyed the little walkway that she’d followed the last time she’d come next door. 

 

After her window epiphany, she’d hurried downstairs to wrap the abandoned, untouched dinner in foil. The folding wagon, purchased over the summer for gardening and quickly abandoned in the laundry room along with her good intentions for productivity, was pulled out, the unsorted laundry it had been housing for several weeks dumped onto the counter next to the machine.

 

She carefully stacked her side dishes and dessert, tucked the foil snugly around the platter bearing her capon, addingthe wine and several other goodies from her counter. Makeup was touched up, teeth were brushed, then she was heading out into the cold with her heart in her mouth. 

 

_ Here goes nothing.. _ .

 

Now she found herself shivering in the sharp December wind, willing Erik to respond to the knocking at his door. He hadn’t answered the front door the last time either, she considered after several more moments passed.

 

The floodlight came on once she entered the backyard, the motion sensor triggering the same way it had that very first horrible night, and the butterflies who had taken up residence in her stomach took wing. 

 

She knocked on the glass kitchen door, as she had the day she’d returned the car, and stepped back to wait. He would take a moment to put on his mask before answering, she knew.  _ You’ll count to a hundred, and if he still hasn’t responded, take the hint and let him go. _

 

She was counting in the thirties when he crossed the kitchen, seeming unsurprised to find it was her. 

 

Unsurprised and frowning.

 

Christine tried not to lose her tentative confidence at the sight of his obvious displeasure. He was tugging a dark grey sweater over the black t-shirt he wore and self consciously tugged down the cuffs around his wrists as he approached the door with narrowed eyes. 

 

Christine felt a sharp pang of regret. The damage on his left arm extended down to the top of his hand, the discolored scarring licking over his knuckles. She hated that he’d felt the need to hide even that from her, just to answer his door.

 

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

 

His deep, melodic voice was colored with wary concern, again angling himself slightly in the partially open doorway. Christine could see that under the mask his forehead was bunched in consternation. 

 

“Hi,” she murmured breathlessly, her cheeks coloring.  _ It’s fine, it’s cold, he won’t even notice. _ “Yes! I mean, yes, everything’s fine.”

 

His eyes narrowed further.

 

_ Get yourself together!  _ she roared to herself internally.  _ You sound like an idiot _ !

 

“I-I saw your light was on and...did you already have dinner?” she asked with a swallow, knowing he had not.

 

“Yes.” His eyes were still squinting down at her, and his voice was now more suspicious than concerned. 

 

_ He’d rather call a piece of toast dinner than spend time with you, Christine. You’re delusional _ . She tamped the pessimistic voice back again and gave it one last try.

 

“Oh, that’s...that’s too bad. It’s just...I was home alone tonight, and I thought you might be as well and that we could…”

 

Erik appeared unmoved in the face of her stammering, and what miniscule confidence she’d cobbled together shriveled and fled as he glared suspiciously down. Her earliest impressions of his height were accurate she realized, and she felt herself shrink in front of him, her voice growing smaller as well.

 

“I-I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I thought you...might want to have dinner with me, but...this was...this was stupid.” Christine felt her face heat, and knew tears wouldn’t be far behind. 

 

_ Just go home. Don’t let him see you crying, just turn and go. He doesn't need to know you like him, he doesn't need to see you fall apart. This was a stupid mistake.  _

 

“I’m sorry I bothered you...again.” Her voice had trailed to a whisper as she turned to leave.  _ Let’s hope you can walk away without falling and ripping your pants. _

 

“Wait.” 

 

His voice had lost some of its suspicion, and she froze. His eyes still squinted at her, full of concern once more. “Are you sure you're okay?”

 

Christine was unable to answer, knew that if she tried her resolve would break, and she would melt into her misery, right there on his flagstones.

 

“I don’t know what--you’re not...for God’s sake, will you just come in? It’s freezing out there.”

 

Christine stood dumbly for a moment as he stepped aside to allow her entrance. At her hesitation, Erik huffed and gave her the universal hand gesture of  _ get the fuck on with it _ . It was enough to make her jump and follow him into the house. 

 

Christine sighed at the warmth that greeted her once he’d slid the door shut. His kitchen was bright and spacious, as she already knew, missing the island and dividing wall that her own possessed. She turned in almost giddy anticipation to see the room beyond, the room where he seemed to spend the bulk of his time, just out of sight of her little window.

 

The room was cavernous, with vaulted ceilings and a large stone fireplace, in front of which sat a comfy-looking sectional sofa, where the little cat watched her with interest. On the far wall, the wall where the television sat in her own house, there were two massive tables, one with a computer, the side of it piled with tight rolls of paper. The other table was tilted, a large sheet of paper secured to its face. A drafting table, she realized, and the rolls of paper were blueprints. 

 

Christine sucked in an elated breath; one more piece of the puzzle she could slot into place, the vague outline of a flesh-and-blood man becoming more real before her eyes. She turned with what she was sure was a stupid grin on her face to the other side of the room, and froze at the sight which lay before her. 

 

_ I wonder if he likes music _ , she’d supposed during her cleaning frenzy several days prior…

 

On the opposite wall sat the largest, shiniest concert grand Christine had ever seen in a private home, answering her question in the best possible way.

 

“You know not much is going to be open, right? It’s Christmas Eve, even the Chinese takeout place closes early.” 

 

Christine pulled her eyes away from the piano with difficulty at the sound of his skeptical voice, her own brow furrowed now. He’d crossed his arms and was still eyeing her warily.

 

“What?” She replayed his words and realized his meaning with a blush.  “No, I...I don’t want to go out anywhere.”

 

Erik squinted at her again, his head cocked slightly as though she was speaking in a different language. 

 

“Oh!” She jumped, realizing she still held the green tupperware in her hands. “I made this for you. Mamma V’s famous fruitcake, it’s really good...but you can't eat it for a few weeks, it still needs to mellow.”

 

The only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire for several long, agonizing moments.

 

“You show up at my door and say you want to have dinner together, but you don’t want to go out...so you want me to  _ make _ you dinner?” he questioned slowly, still looking at her with bafflement, “and you brought me a dessert I can’t eat until Valentine’s Day. Thanks?”

 

Her mouth dropped open in shock. “What?! No! That’s not what I said at all! How did you get...no! That’s not what I said!”

 

“Well it’s not  _ my _ fault you speak in riddles.” He scoffed, his arms dropping to his sides as he leaned upon the counter.  “Why are you so willing to trust my questionable culinary skills?”

 

“Oh my God,” she muttered, bringing a hand to her face. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to bungle things so horribly. “That’s not what I meant. _ I  _ made dinner.”

 

“So I’m supposed to trust  _ your _ questionable culinary skills?”

 

Christine dropped her hand from her eyes and balled her fists at her sides in frustration. He was making this  _ impossible _ . 

 

Erik watched her with a sharp grin, his eyes lit with mischief. He was playing with her, she realized--toying with her with sheathed claws, the way his cat might play with a mouse. Christine felt heat steal up her neck and burn bright at her cheeks. 

 

“That’s  _ not _ what I meant. I knocked for five minutes! Will you just go open your damned door? You know, the front one? It  _ does _ open, right?”

 

Erik watched her for another silent, loaded moment before disappearing down the dark hallway. When he reappeared, it was with her snow-covered wagon in tow. She crossed the room and with shaking hands, removed the foil-covered capon, setting it gingerly on his countertop before peeling the foil back.

 

“I already  _ made _ the dinner, I was hoping you might be interested in sharing it with me.” Her voice trembled nearly as much as her hands, she was mortified to realize. “But if you’re not willing to trust my  _ questionable culinary skills _ , I’m sorry for bothering you.”

 

Another beat of silence passed between them before he moved to stand beside her. There was still a hint of mischief in his eyes, but when he spoke, he’d gentled his tone. 

 

“I'm only teasing you...I don't know how to talk to people anymore, just ignore me. I’d be a fool to say no to such a lovely invitation.”

 

Christine glanced up to find his eyes soft and fixed on her, not the bird on the counter, watched his throat bob as he swallowed hard before turning from her hastily.

 

“Take your coat off, make yourself comfortable. I’ll get this back in the oven, I think  _ someone _ left it sitting outside in the snow.”

 

Christine carefully, quietly removed her wet ankle boots on the mat that was near the door as he turned away. She realized she was still trembling.

 

“Here, let me take...” 

 

His rich voice cut off as she peeled off her her puffy lavender coat, and she watched his adam's apple bob once more. His eyes had widened as she stepped forward with her coat. 

 

The sweater he’d bought for her was, she knew, incredibly flattering, and she had the soft grey and blue scarf at her shoulders.

 

“Thank you,” she said softly, running her hand over the cuddly edge of the scarf. 

 

He said nothing, just nodded curtly before hastily turning away with her coat, but Christine saw that the unscarred side of his neck had flushed pink.

 

“Is there anything I can help you do?” she’d called out after she’d given herself a tour of the large room. Erik had disappeared with her coat and not immediately returned, and in his absence Christine had been yowled at by the little cat. 

 

“Hi, pretty girl,” she’d whispered, holding out her palm, which was promptly head butted. “Where did your daddy go?”

 

“Yes, you can keep her from absconding with your chicken while I unearth the table.” She jumped at his voice, not expecting him to have silently reappeared behind her. 

 

Sitting gingerly on the edge of the sofa while the cat pushed her head under Christine’s palm, demanding attention, she watched as he scooped up several armloads of rolled blueprints off a teakwood table she hadn’t even noticed, depositing them in a heap onto the workspace across the room. 

 

“I’d apologize for the mess, but we weren’t exactly expecting company.”

 

He flashed her another sharp smile and Christine felt her own mouth curving up, understanding that there was no malice in his words.  _ Caustic sense of humor _ , she thought, as another piece of the Erik-shaped puzzle slid into place.

 

“How do you know I wasn’t invited?” she countered. “Bebe and I had girl time after all.”

 

“Then I would have expected you to know she doesn’t like chicken.”

 

Christine felt a muscle spasm below her eye and realized it had been many months since she had smiled so hugely. “I thought she was going to try to abscond with it?”

 

He shrugged grimly.  _ An excellent poker face _ was added to the growing tally of things she knew for certain. 

 

“Ah, well...the absconsion would have been executed with the aim of knocking the whole thing on the floor, rendering it worthless to all. If her majesty is not pleased with the meal selection, no one gets to eat in peace.”

 

The cat loudly meowed her agreement with the sentiment, and then another one of those genuine laughs somehow crossed Christine’s lips, to her surprise. She was having fun, she realized. She couldn’t remember the last time fun had made an appearance in her life. Not in the past year, that was for damned sure, not in the preceding months as her father died. Here and now though, with this man and his cat, she was having fun.

 

“Well, it’s a capon, if that makes a difference?”

 

Erik spun around from where he was arranging chairs to face her once more, a smile tugging at his thin lips. “That makes all the difference in the world. Do you hear that, Habibti? Very fancy.”

 

Christine repeated the foreign-sounding word in a whisper to the little cat and was promptly rewarded with another vocalization and a headbut. 

 

“Is that her name?” she asked Erik’s back as he moved back into the kitchen, receiving a non-committal “mhmm” before he disappeared behind the refrigerator door. Christine pulled out her phone as he worked in the kitchen, looking up the strange-sounding name. “Not Bebe,” she murmured to the cat, as she pawed at the fringed edge of Christine’s scarf.

 

_ Arabic _ was added to the The List. 

 

“Cheese,” he announced to the room, straightening from the refrigerator at last, and the cat launched herself from Christine’s lap like a furry rocket. 

 

She heard the sound of her own laughter as if hearing it for the first time; a stranger’s laugh, shimmery and carefree, absent of the heavy shackles of pain she’d been carrying for so long.

 

“Her favorite word,” Erik explained unnecessarily, shaking his head in mock disapproval as the cat  _ absconded _ with a cheese cube to eat beneath the table. “So spoiled and greedy,” he lamented, motioning for Christine to seat herself at the table. She sat at the table slowly, watching him inspect the wine from her wagon with a critical eye.

 

“I can’t imagine who spoiled her so...I’m sorry if the vintage isn’t up to her majesty’s standards.”

 

He shrugged, a hesitant grin still tugging at the corner of his mouth as he placed the red back in the wagon, leaving out the second bottle of Sauternes. “Not an ideal pairing, but I’m sure we’ll survive.”

 

.

.

 

“So how did you wind up stranded here alone on Christmas?” he asked lightly after the dishes were plated and they’d begun to eat. 

 

It was the first thing he’d said since he’d poured her the second glass of wine; they were now each on their third, and the silence had sat in the room between them like a fourth guest at the table. 

 

Silence, Christine realized quickly, was something she’d need to get used to. She couldn't say that the quiet was necessarily uncomfortable, it was clear they could make small talk with each other, and she quite liked his dry, barbed wit, but silence was not something she’d been accustomed to, at least, not until the past year. 

 

Raoul had been a chatterbox, always filling the spaces between conversations with stories of work or tales of the racquetball court at the club. Meg, Christine had come to learn, was the same. As she slipped further into depression, her friend had eagerly filled in the dead air with gossip of school friends and anecdotes about her fiance's family.

 

Erik preferred to let the unspoken speak volumes in nothingness, it seemed; formulated his responses slowly, let thoughts hang before completing them fully. 

 

Somehow, Christine thought, he’d managed to hit on the most loaded question of all, all in one go.

 

“I’m not stranded,” she answered in an equally light tone. “I live here.”

 

Silence helped itself to a helping of mashed potatoes as the man across the table blinked slowly at her, sipping his wine, waiting. It was Christine’s turn to swallow hard.

 

“I don’t really have any family. This was my great-aunt’s house, and I don’t have any cousins, at least not any I know, no siblings...my dad d-died right before Thanksgiving last year, so…” she trailed off, horrified that still, even now, a ful, year later, just saying the words aloud brought tears to her eyes.

 

“I’m very sorry.” 

 

Erik’s voice, in the space of three words, had transformed. The prickly edge he’d wielded since answering the door to her melted away; sharpness mellowed out to comforting warmth, and Christine wanted to wrap herself in the thick, velvet softness there. “This must be a hard time of year,” he continued in that gentle voice, so full of understanding. 

 

She nodded in agreement, abashedly wiping away a rogue tear that moved over the apple of her cheek. “It has been. I didn’t think it would be, I didn’t think I would really care about Christmas, you know? He was gone last year too, but I...I had so much on my plate, I don’t think I even really noticed the holidays. This is the first time it  _ feels _ like he’s gone.” 

 

The press of her cloth napkin was a welcome bit of roughness against the hollow under eye, and she shook away the emotion that had clouded her for the moment. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to--”

 

“No, don’t apologize,” Erik murmured. “It’s natural...you’re fine.”

 

She felt the little cat winding between the legs of her chair, rubbing a soft, furry head against her ankle.

 

“So you moved here over the summer, right?” he asked innocently, moving the conversation to safer ground.  _ So he thinks _ . “For work?”

 

_ Here we go _ …

 

“You could say that,” she answered slowly, attempting to telepathically instruct the cat to leap onto the table to wreak havoc on the capon after all. Instead, she darted off into the kitchen.  _ Traitor _ .

 

“I  _ could _ say that, but I shouldn’t,” he inferred.

 

Christine took her time loading her fork with a bite of capon and a smidge of her cranberry relish, closing her eyes and savoring the mouthful. Silence, it turned out, was a lovely dinner companion.

 

“I got divorced,” she she said quickly, pulling the bandaid off the wound quickly. The sting, she’d found, had lessened as the months passed. “After he left...I needed to move, obviously. My great aunt had died, and the house was a part of my inheritance.”

 

“ _ He _ left?” Erik’s eyes had narrowed again, his wineglass paused halfway to his mouth. “You didn’t leave him?”

 

Christine felt herself color and gulped at her own wine before shaking her head. “No. He was having an affair, and he left right before Christmas, so I--”

 

“He  _ cheated _ on  _ you _ ?”

 

The butterflies, which up until this point had been resting quietly since she'd seated herself on the sofa earlier, all flared to life, beating their tiny wings against her insides. He made it sound like the notion of someone being unfaithful to her was preposterous. Erik's forehead was bunched under the mask, and she could just barely discern the outline of a snarl on his warped features.

 

“Wait…” His brow drew together as he stared at her with slightly widened eyes. “Your husband left at Christmas?  _ Last _ Christmas?”

 

Christine nodded mutely, watching his eyes narrow again as he pieced together the timeline of her shitshow year. 

 

“Your dad passed away in November...and your husband left in December...two weeks? Three?”

 

“Two and a half, I think.” Christine's smile was grim as he dropped his fork with a clatter against the plate, fully outraged on her behalf. “I didn't even have a headstone picked out yet,” she murmured, taking another bite of stuffing.

 

Silence sipped its wine as Christine pushed the food around her plate, contemplating whether or not she wanted a bit more capon. Erik was still gaping at her across the table. 

 

Habibti had reappeared and Christine watched as she sat before the kitchen door, enthralled with the falling snow. After several moments, she heard the drag of cutlery on the plate across the table. He'd composed himself then, she thought, chancing a glance up to see him chewing thoughtfully before he swallowed and sipped his wine.

 

“What a piece of shit.”

 

His tone was breezy and conversational, and Christine burst into laughter, unable to stop herself. “Would you like to hear the rest?” she asked, her eyes watering.

 

The rumble of laughter that came from Erik’s throat was low and rich and made her shiver. It reminded her of summer storms, the kind she’d anticipate eagerly when she was young, with deep, rolling thunder signaling the start of the warm rain.

 

“There's more? Obviously someone ran over your puppy, right?”

 

Christine tittered as she pushed around her food. “I worked in education, for an arts-focused charter school.”

 

“Stop it,” his voice rumbled, already chuckling in horror.

 

“The double edged sword of corporate education. We found out we were closing before the school year ended.”

 

Erik groaned, still laughing sympathetically. It felt good to give voice to it all, she thought, felt good to have someone else acknowledge her disaster of a year for what it was.  _ It feels nice to laugh again. _

 

“So,” Christine continued, turning up her wineglass and draining it, “if you’re keeping score, I buried my dad in November, after being his primary caregiver the whole time he was sick. My cheating fuck of a husband left just before Christmas, and I lost my job that same spring. So when my great aunt died, I moved here.”

 

Erik had stopped laughing and fixed her with a pained look as she paused to drain her wine glass.

 

“Since then, my ex-husband had gotten engaged to the woman he had an affair with, my unemployment is going to run out soon, and I’ve made a fool of myself in front of the man next door more times than I can count.”

 

Silence, Christine learned, was a contemplative guest, as she squirmed under his sharp gaze.

 

“That is...a terrible fucking year,” Erik said finally, sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Christine.”

 

Her heart caught in her throat at the way he said her name, and the sincerity in his voice.

 

“...but here you are, still standing. You moved, on your own, you're starting over in a new place. That’s pretty resilient, I think.”

 

“Only standing some of the time,” she murmured, thinking of the days she could barely drag herself out of bed.

 

“Well, you're allowed that. When you lose everything, putting yourself back together doesn't happen overnight. Anyone who tells you differently is an idiot.”

 

He was speaking to her with a voice of experience, she could tell. Erik's eyes were soft upon her from across the table, and the butterflies fluttered in unison.

 

“My turn, I think.”

 

In an instant that wounded look had returned to his eyes.

 

“I actually don't think I can stay another minute without knowing, so you're going to need to to tell me the truth,” Christine said with a small smile.

 

She watched as his neck colored, his thin lips flatten out, and her heart tugged at his discomfort.

 

“Well, you may as well get on with it.” His gentle, compassionate voice had changed in an instant, seeming deadened and heavy.  _ Resigned _ , she added to her list.

 

“Do you actually play that piano, or is it just for show?”

 

Several beats of silence followed, during which she watched his eyes widen in relieved surprise, before crinkling with his broad smile.

 

He'd probably been very handsome once, she thought. High, sharp cheekbones and a strong chin, wildly expressive eyes, that tumble of dark hair she'd tried imagining... _ That doesn't matter _ . It wasn't an imagined past version of him that she fantasised about regularly, Christine reminded herself.

 

“Oh, I definitely play,” he laughed. “I started out double majoring with music performance, but was convinced it was untenable if I actually wanted a career.”

 

“I was a performance major!” Christine exclaimed, elated at addition of a puzzle piece she'd not anticipated. “Vocal performance...you were piano then? Are you an engineer or--”

 

“Architect,” he cut in silkily. “Should have stuck with music, definitely less on-the-job hazards. Why were you working at a school if you have a performance degree? You should be singing with the symphony, or with an opera.”

 

Christine flushed, both at his question and the brief allusion to how he'd been injured. “Ha, I'm definitely not good enough for anything like that. I was at least smart enough to get a master's in education, so I was able to--”

 

“But you  _ are _ , though. Your voice is amazing.”

 

One of the butterflies, or possibly several of them, fluttered up around her heart, as their brethren tightened her stomach. 

 

“The night you brought Bibi home...I heard you singing Marguerite's aria from Faust after you left. And then again the next day.” 

 

His smile caused more of the blasted butterflies to beat their wings, and Christine felt her stomach twist with need for something she wasn't able to define.

 

“I was trying to thank you for the concert yesterday when you...fell victim to your driveway.” Erik's eyes narrowed at her, and he continued in an accusatory tone. “Actually, you ruined my whole schedule. I came in after listening to you and started playing when I was supposed to be sleeping, then I slept when I was supposed to be working. I just started a new project and had to pull an all nighter to catch up.”

 

Christine let out a breath she thought she might have been holding for several days, since she returned the cat.  _ He hadn't been avoiding her _ . She began to laugh, feeling lighter than she had in months.

 

“So what about you? Have you been married before?” she asked him once she’d controlled her ridiculous laughter.

 

“Mm, yes. Married to my job.” 

 

_ Bitter _ found its way to her list at his sharp tone. 

 

“Everyone told me to get married and start a family while I was young enough to enjoy them, but I was far too busy building skyscrapers in Dubai. Plenty of time for all that, I thought. Waiting didn't turn out to be a smart move, I suppose.”

 

Christine felt her breath catch and insides twist in pain for him.  _ Just make him take off that stupid mask and tell him it doesn't matter _ . She wanted to tell him that he didn't need to continue, to just let her kiss him, but her voice had become stuck, the fluttering wings in her chest trembling nervously.

 

“I was working on a project in Qatar when it happened,” he continued after draining his wine glass. “It was after the war had started, the height of Blackwater. There was an insane amount of money to be made, and everyone wanted a piece of it. The firm I worked for was no exception.”

 

“Was it a bomb?” she heard herself blurt out, instantly regretting her participation in the conversation.  _ It doesn't matter _ .

 

Erik's smile was grim. He continued talking, but Christine had stopped listening, had stopped hearing him entirely. She didn't care, didn't care about his disfigured face and scarred body, didn't care about any of it.  _ It doesn't matter _ .

 

“Were you alone? Did you have someone to...when you came home, did anyone take care of you?”

 

She didn't know why she gave voice to the questions she'd asked in her head, during all those weeks of watching him. She desperately needed to know though, in that moment, needed to know how badly broken he was.  _ You can't fix him. You can't put yourself back together and him too. _

 

She'd reached across the table and taken his hand, she realized, didn't even remember doing it. Christine silently willed him to meet her eye and answer her questions, but his eyes were fixed on their threaded fingers in the middle of the table. She felt a shudder run up his arm as she gently caressed his scarred knuckles.

 

She'd begun to pull away, embarrassed by her unconscious act of boldness, when his pinky hooked over hers, preventing her hand from escaping. His fingers were long and thin and bony, with knobbed knuckles.  _ Piano hands _ . Tendons stood out in relief, and she traced one with her thumbnail, causing him to shudder once more.

 

Abruptly, her hand was released as he pulled his own back across the table, picking up his water glass with a slight tremble.

 

“It was a while before they were able to get me home. It wasn't a government contract, so the priority...by the time they did, the damage was done. The contractor I was meeting onsite was killed, so were a handful of others. They told me I was lucky.”

 

He hadn't answered any of her questions, and it was her turn to infer.  

 

_ No _

“Bibi,” he said sharply, startling her from her thoughts as the little cat hopped onto the edge of the table. “Get down  _ now _ .”

 

The cat meowed her rebuttal pleadingly and Christine couldn’t help laughing again.

 

“You’re not being a very polite hostess,” Erik scolded the frustrated feline, pushing back his chair as she vocalized animatedly, glaring at Christine when she was lifted from the table. 

 

“Oh no, we didn’t give her anything!” she laughed, gathering up their plates and following Erik to the kitchen. 

 

Weeks and weeks of watching him move about his kitchen made the next twenty minutes a gracefully executed ballet, as she helped him clear the table, cleaning plates and loading the dishwasher, wrapping leftovers and putting them in his refrigerator, despite his protests.

 

“I hope my questionable culinary skills didn’t offend your palette too terribly,” Christine said lightly, after winning back Habibti’s good graces by giving her a small plate of chopped capon.

 

“It’s questionable no longer. You’ve aptly proven yourself, I’m looking forward to being able to eat my fruitcake sometime in April.”

 

She laughed in outrage, happy to see he was smiling. “You know, that is a highly sought-after recipe. And besides, I’m sure I can contrive to cook for you again before spring. Dinner was the least I could do, after all your nice gifts. I wish I had something else to give you.”

 

She took note but ignored the way he stiffened at her mention of cooking for him again, the way his neck colored slightly at her last words. It was the first time she’d mentioned the gifts he’d bought her, but she wanted,  _ needed _ him to know how much his thoughtfulness had meant to her.

 

“Oh, but there is.” Erik turned away from the refrigerator, hanging up the towel he’d slung over his shoulder. Christine felt gooseflesh raise on her arms at the look in his eyes, felt the brush of a hundred tiny wings tighten her stomach.

 

“You can sing something for me.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Only if you provide my accompaniment.”

Christine's voice was slightly breathless as he crossed the room to her. Long, bony fingers reached out to her face, and she thought he might be able to hear her heartbeat as it thundered in her neck.

She'd overlooked his hands in her fantasies, she realized, understanding in that moment what a grave oversight that had been. The distance had been too great from her little window, and she hadn't been able to see all of the fine details; the length of his fingers, how gracefully they moved. 

The thought of those fingers clutched with her own, moving across her skin, caressing her, moving within her…

“Of course,” he murmured. There was a featherweight pressure at her hair and then Erik was drawing back, a long red thread from the throw on the sofa in his nimble fingertips. 

She shivered as he pulled away, feeling a rush of heat shoot through her, but that wounded look instantly returned to his eyes, and Christine realized how badly he'd interpreted her response. 

_ No!_

As she'd done the night she returned the cat, she quickly closed the space between them, laying her own hand against his arm, changing the look of hurt to one of confused surprise.

“Do you have any requests?”

He was close, so close that she was able to smell him, clean and soapy with a hint of something spicy. He had tensed as she stepped forward, with a ramrod stiffness in his spine, but seemed yet unwilling to break the moment and pull away. His throat bobbed again, and Christine thought it was all she could do to keep from leaning up to bury her nose against it.

“The Menotti, I think.” 

His voice was soft and low, and this time when she shivered, Christine kept her grip on his arm. 

“Vanessa? Hmmm...that’s a deal.”  Erik hadn't pulled away, but she could feel the flex of his corded muscle tighten beneath her hand. “I’ll sing for you, and then we’ll have dessert.”

Christine didn't realize that she'd leaned into him until she felt the warmth of his breath when he spoke again, close enough to taste, if he bent his head to her.

“Well...how could I possibly refuse that?”

When he pulled away, finally breaking the contact between them, the heat in her cheeks had nothing to do with the warmth of the room, Christine knew. The smooth side of Erik’s neck was equally as flushed.  _ He was right there...you should have reached up on your toes and kissed him, dummy.  _

Feeling as though she’d missed a crucial opportunity, she followed him back to the giant living room, where he seated himself at the gleaming black piano.

_ Must the Winter Come So Soon _ was a plodding, oddly-syncopated lament from a little known opera, and Christine was surprised he recognized it, surprised further that he was able to name the librettist. 

_ Definitely likes music _ was slotted into place.

It was not written for her voice type, but the aria had still found its way into her repertoire sometime during her junior year, and Christine had used it as an audition piece several times to showcase the weightier end of her voice. The melancholy song had always appealed to her, and this year, with its winter that never seemed to end, the song felt especially poignant.

Erik played beautifully, having pulled up the music on a tablet he kept on the piano, barely glancing at it more than a few times, she noted. Christine wondered how it was he was able to play such an aria from memory. 

_ He never leaves the house, and he's clearly not spending his days watching the Hallmark channel, idiot. _ She blushed at her own thoughts, and wondered how much music he knew. She sucked in a deep, low breath before her second line.

_ Night after night, I hear the hungry deer wander weeping in the wood _

When the aria was complete, she sighed, trembling a little. “I love Menotti. His stuff is just a little weird, you know?”

“I like Barber for the same reason,” Erik answered quietly. “The rhythm sequences he uses are almost always a bit unexpected, but somehow it manages to work beautifully. Their styles were very complimentary on this opera.” She watched as he continued to play; a soft, rolling melody executed flawlessly. 

“Your voice is...it’s exquisite. You really should be performing somewhere...have you ever done any oratorio work or do you prefer opera?”

Christine considered a moment before answering. It had been so long since she’d had anyone with which to talk about music--her passion, her entire reason for being just a few years ago, and it felt odd to do so now, like peering through a looking glass and seeing a person she used to be.

“I do love opera,” she said at last, “but it’s not necessarily all I like performing….a gig’s a gig, right? I did some oratorio work in undergrad that I really enjoyed, and I’ve always loved the interpretive freedom of art songs and song cycles.”

His eyes were almost closed as he played, giving her a chance to stare for a moment, for the first time that evening. The mask, which was something burn victims wore to prevent infection and stretch scars, she’d learned after googling it once she’d seen him wearing it for the first time, was very thin. It allowed her to see the outline of most of his facial expressions, although she’d prefer to see him unencumbered. 

He looked incredibly relaxed and languid as he played, the way he was in his kitchen when she was not there crowding his space. Christine felt her heart twist, wondering if she’d ever have the chance to see him that at peace with her in the picture, if she'd ever get the chance to tell him he could remove the barrier between them.

“One more?”

She blinked, realizing his eyes were open and fixed brightly on her, and nodded her acquiescence. He didn’t give her any indication on what he’d chosen for her to sing, just started immediately on the short introduction, repeating it for several bars until she’d prepared herself to jump in.

_ Sure on this shining night, of star-made shadows round _

It was Barber again, an art song she’d known since her early years in undergrad, although the beauty of it had been lost on her until fairly recently. After the Vanessa aria, it felt good to be able to open up some of those upper notes, and Christine allowed herself get pulled into the loveliness of the song. Wonder, resignation, despair, all wound together in the sweeping, silvery notes, and she was unsurprised to feel wetness at her cheeks when she reached the middle section’s pinnacle.

_ All is healed, all is health _

Christine felt her voice spinning out across the cavernous room with its excellent acoustics, and tried to live within the lyrical melody.

_ Hearts all whole _

The piano echoed her in a stunning cadence on the final verse, the final notes wavering in the air before they died away. The tears hadn’t stopped falling. 

Christine kept her face towards the fire and her eyes closed for several heartbeats as the last note still seemed to echo through the room. 

_ They could make beautiful music together. _

“So beautiful,” he murmured, as if he had divined her thoughts.

She nodded in agreement, turning to face him, after wiping her eyes. “I do love that song.”

“Mhm. The song too.”

The flapping of delicate wings threatened to take her off her feet as heat suffused her cheeks. Before she could respond, Erik had gracefully lifted himself from the piano, turning to tend to the guttering fire.

Christine moved away from him, needing to catch her breath after what they’d shared. The drafting table on the far wall caught her interest, and she drifted over to it, examining the work with a small smile. “I didn't realize this sort of stuff was still done by hand.”

He glanced up to where she stood and shrugged as he placed fresh wood into the grate. “Most of it’s done digitally, but there are certain things I draw out first.”

A pair of glasses caught her eye, black horn rims, casually discarded in the center of the table as though they’d been hastily removed.  _ Removed to put on a mask _ . “Do you wear glasses?” 

He straightened up from where he’d crouched in front of the fireplace. “This may shock you, but they don't belong to the cat.”

Christine felt her grin stretch across her face. _Glasses. A sarcastic ass._ The List was growing longer by the minute. 

__

__

__

“Well, I wear glasses too,” she replied primly, moving to the kitchen. Erik followed close behind. “Now, how big of a slice of pie do you want? And are we having wine or hot chocolate? I brought both, you pick.”

He moved past her, pulling out two white mugs from a cupboard, and a whisk from a drawer. She watched as he turned her packets of hot chocolate into a coffee house-style delicacy, frothing milk in a saucepan with the whisk before decanting the chocolatey drink into the two mugs. 

Next, he disappeared to stoop to the wine refrigerator beneath the counter, rising after a moment with bottle of red and two glasses to meet her raised eyebrow.

“We're adults, Christine. Why not both?”

That stranger’s laugh again, glittering with happiness rang out across Erik’s spotless kitchen.

“My bottle wasn’t up to par?”

“Not for dessert,” he answered breezily, “and we drank your dessert wine with dinner.”

“Then why didn’t you open the red earlier?!” Christine was enjoying herself far too much, she thought. This easy banter, how nice it felt being here with him...she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this much fun.

His eyes, lit with mischief once more, sparkled back at her. “I’m sure it can be requisitioned to a task for which it's better suited. The bottom of a saucepot, perhaps. I have a nice boeuf bourguignon recipe you can have.”

Her outraged laughter bounced through the kitchen as he moved past her, after placing the drinkware and bottle on a tray, carrying it back to the great room. 

_ You could get used to feeling this way. _ A dangerous thought, to be sure.  _ Such a silly bitch, Christine, _ she reminded herself.

“Pie?” she called out, feeling delightedly at home moving through his kitchen, in spite of herself.

“The smallest piece I can eat without offending you. I feel like I’m going to pop. Plates are to the left, above your head.”

He wasn’t wrong, she thought, wishing she hadn’t had the second piece of capon after all. Christine pulled open the cupboard with a smile, spotting the stack of small, white plates. Hesitating, her hand hovered in the air for an indecisive moment. Could she be this bold? 

_ Yes _ , she thought determindley, excited over the way the night had turned out and feeling slightly drunk off his smile.

Cutting a medium-sized slice from the pie, the decadent dark chocolate piled high with fluffy meringue, she retrieved two forks and a napkin before turning with the single plate. 

Christine froze when she saw him.

Erik had not reseated himself at the table, as she’d expected. His arm, impossibly long, was draped across the back of the sofa, where he sat in front of the fire, his head tipped back. Sharing the slice of pie had seemed like a daring move when she thought they’d be sitting across from each other at the table.  _ Now though… _

The image of them feeding each other bites of the dessert flashed behind her eyes, which she’d closed briefly, attempting to steady her breath. They’d be sitting snuggled together intimately, her soft, blue sweater-encased curves pressed to his strong, lean side...she would laugh at something he would say before he’d lean down to kiss chocolate from the corner of her mouth...

When Christine opened her eyes again, she found him looking back at her over the arm of the sofa. She waited with bated breath, waited for him to question what the hell she was doing, for him to say it would be best if she just left.

“I’m going to drink your wine if you’re not coming back,” he said instead, matter-of-factly.

“Oh, you'd better not!” she laughed, giddy with relief. “Not if you know what’s good for you, sir.”

.

.

“So how long have you technically owned my cat? I feel like it might impact how well she settles into her new home.”

It was his turn to laugh as the empty plate and forks were set aside on the big leather ottoman. They had chattered about music as they shared the pie; he'd asked her about roles she'd sung, she asked about how long he'd studied piano. 

Christine had told him about her father playing with the symphony, and somehow, sharing the memories of those long weekends---spent seeing show after show, eating sandwiches packed from home in the green room in between performances---with Erik had brought a smile to her face, rather than clouding her with grief.

He'd told her that he not only played, but had been composing since he was a boy, although he hadn't written anything in years.

“A lack of inspiration, I suppose,” he'd answered with a sad smile, when she'd asked why not.

He confessed to also playing violin, and Christine thought her face might actually crack under the stretch of her smile.  _ Daddy would have liked him. _

He'd never leaned down to kiss chocolate from her lips, but there  _ had _ been a heart-stopping moment when he'd lightly dabbed the napkin at her chin. Christine was certain he'd be able to smell the arousal rolling off of her in waves, as she'd squeaked a thank you.

“About seven years. Her breed is a popular export and everyone in Singapore with a female drain cat is looking to cash in. She was a part of a litter from a little old woman in the building I was staying in. Took forever to get her paperwork certified to bring her home.”

“Were you there for work? And the man that was over the other night? Is he just a friend?” 

Christine couldn’t prevent the questions from being blurted. She knew it probably sounded like 

she was interrogating him, but she felt desperate to put the puzzle of him together. Erik blew out an aggrieved breath and she sighed in relief. The handsome stranger was definitely  _ not _ a love interest.

“Yes, I was there for work. Nadir is my business partner, and a chronic thorn in my ass. Why?”

He looked askance at her and Christine shrugged, avoiding his eye. “I was just curious. I thought maybe he was your boyfriend or something.”

Erik jolted as though she’d struck him. He’d been sitting beside her at a respectable distance, but now twisted to face her incredulously. “Even if I were interested in men--which I am not,” he added emphatically, “he could be the very last person on earth, and I’d die happily alone.”

Christine laughed at the sneer she could make out beneath the thin mask. “I wasn’t sure! It seemed like a date. He showed up in the middle of the day and was still there the next morning…”

“He came by to drop off the specifics of the new project we started, and invited himself to stay for dinner--not that he was invited. He’s a damned lightweight who can’t hold his bourbon, but that didn't stop him from opening it, and  _ then _ he decides he couldn’t possibly drive home.”

Erik’s voice had grown progressively more outraged he recounted the story for her, and Christine was doubled over laughing. She took advantage of his distraction to shift herself slightly closer. He was close enough to touch now, and she feel the warmth of him, could lean forward and lay a hand on his chest. 

“He let my cat get out, drank all of my orange juice, and thoroughly overstayed his welcome. I tried to force an Uber on him twice. He is the most irritating man in the world.”

“But he’s your friend,” she countered through her giggles. 

Erik sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Yes. Against my better judgement, he  _ is _ my friend. We’ve worked together for almost twenty years at this point.”

Christine’s laughter finally died out, and they settled back into a comfortable silence for several minutes.

“What do they look like?” he asked suddenly. “Your glasses,” he clarified at her confused expression.

Christine flushed, grateful for the fire to hide her redness. “Round, tortoise shell, probably too big for my face.”

Erik had shifted once more to face the fire with his head tipped back on the sofa. His thin lips curved into a small smile at her description, and the butterflies trembled. 

“But,” she continued, “I only wear them in the mornings before I put my contacts in.” 

She thought he looked vaguely disappointed at that news, and vowed she would wear glasses twenty four hours a day if it would make him like her more; she would go home and log onto Zenni and order a different pair for every day of the week if she needed to…

The cat appeared at that moment, jumping to Erik’s lap, letting them both know how abandoned she was feeling with insistent mewing. Christine watched as she pressed her tiny head against his chest, arching under the hand he ran soothingly down her brown-ticked back. 

Bibi seemed to be eyeing her with suspicion, and as pathetic as it might have been, she found herself making pleading eye contact with the small feline.

_ You have to share...we can both love him. _

Almost in response to Christine’s unvoiced thought, the cat pushed her head into Christine’s arm, demanding attention from her as well. Bibi soon settled herself in Christine's lap, meowing at Erik until he resumed petting her.

“You are such a little brat,” he muttered, seeming slightly self-conscious as he placated the cat, scratching her ears, so very close to Christine.

She liked to think that Bibi gave her a conspiratorial wink as she purred heavily.

_ Girls gotta stick together. _

“My turn. Why do you live here and not in some big fancy house you designed? Not that I’m not glad that you live here,” Christine hurriedly added, seeing is forehead bunch at her question. The cat, evidently deciding her matchmaking work was done and that she didn't need to be around for their boring conversation, launched herself from the sofa and beelined to the kitchen.

In the quiet that followed, she tucked a leg up under her, and rested the side of her head against the sofa. Erik continued to stare into the fire for another long moment before speaking.

“It’s quiet here. I used to live in a big apartment in the city, and it was right in the middle of everything, but there’s people constantly and doormen and neighbors...it was too much. You wouldn’t think a cul-de-sac would be private, but everyone is so involved with their own lives, it makes it easy to just disappear.”

Christine thought of the college kids who lived on the other side of him and the way they’d walked past his house as they were caroling, as if it didn't exist. Her throat felt thick at the thought of him, obviously smart and talented and witty, a genuinely nice guy under the cutting exterior, choosing to simply disappear from existence all because of a stupid accident years ago.  _ But then again, look at your own first reaction to him, idiot. _

“I’m a neighbor,” she murmured. Erik said nothing, just gave a short little nod, never pulling his eyes away from the dancing flames before them. 

“I’m not even a good neighbor, but you have been. I thought the stupid gifts of the season game was supposed to be silly stuff like mittens and peanut brittle, but you bought me such nice things...why? Why were you so sweet and thoughtful?”

Christine had foolishly thought that Silence had taken her leave after their dinner. Since she had gently linked her fingers with his, since they’d made music together, since their playful banter in the kitchen, things had seemed warm and relaxed and comfortable...Silence had evidently only been powdering her nose, she thought wryly.

“You seemed like you needed cheering up.”

His voice was low and soft again, and Christine felt her heart trip over itself for a beat. He’d only felt sorry for her.  _ You’re such a fool, Christine. _

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Was that all?”

The fire crackled and popped, and she could hear the wind howling outside the kitchen door. She wondered if she ought to just leave now and save herself anymore humiliation.  _ No, that’s not fair, _ she battled back against the voice. Erik’s gifts  _ had _ cheered her up, had cheered her up immensely. The feelings she’d developed for him since then didn’t take away from that.

“It was nice pretending,” Erik said quietly. 

It had been so long since she had asked her question that the low rumble of his voice startled her. Christine shifted on the sofa so that she was facing him, inadvertently moving even closer, although he never looked away from the fire. The reflection of the flames danced in his eyes, and she sat transfixed.

“Pretending?” she echoed softly.

His nod was minute. “It was nice pretending I had someone like you to shop for. I wandered into the department store on a whim, I didn't intend on...I didn't know what I was doing. The saleswoman asked if I was shopping for my girlfriend, and I have no idea why I said yes, but I did.”

The butterflies had all taken wing, Christine could feel. Their flittering made her stomach bunch and twist, and she wasn’t certain she’d be able to prevent them from bursting forth from her in a wave of nervous, tremulous color. 

The solid warmth of his body was achingly close, close enough to touch, and she was so tired of second guessing everything. Shoving that pessimistic voice back once more, Christine reached out for him. She could feel his corded muscle tighten as she wrapped her hand around his forearm.

“After that it was fun. Thinking about what you might like, how you'd react...you’re quite lovely, you know. It was nice pretending.”

She was certain the sound of her heart could be heard as it thundered in her ears. Erik hadn’t relaxed under her grip, but he yet to pull away.

“It was nice pretending there was someone actually thinking about me this Christmas,” she murmured into the brief space between them. His eyes left the flames for the first time since he’d begun speaking, though they were cast down, and his head turned towards her slightly.

“There was.”

Christine felt an explosion of rapidly moving wings vibrate through her. His voice was little more than a whisper, but it may as well have been a sonic boom for the way it seemed to echo in her bones. 

His head swung fully to face her, and she was pinned by his eyes. He was so close to her now, and it would take so little to close the chasm that had existed between them since that night in his backyard, she knew.

“Why did you come here tonight?”

His voice was sharp, with a thread of accusation that she needed to unravel and throw away, throw away for good.

“We were both alone.” 

No more games, Christine decided, no more pretending.

“No one should be alone on Christmas,” she whispered, leaning in to him. 

Erik's eyes were not just light brown, as she'd previously thought, but flecked with gold and green, like a starburst, and so sad in the way they looked at her now. Christine thought perhaps she might be able to drown in them, but thoughts of doing so would have to wait. Her own eyes slipped shut as she pressed her mouth to his.

His lips were soft but unyielding beneath hers. Christine pulled away, tilted her head and moved in to kiss him again, feeling his quick intake of breath before she closed the short distance once more. Beneath the palm she had pressed to his chest, his heartbeat raced. Breaking off the kiss with a sigh, she let the hand that rested against him fist in his sweater. 

He still hadn’t moved and she knew she needed to let go.  _ That's it then. He’s not interested in you like that. _

She felt him shiver beneath her fingertips, felt the warm co-mingling of their breath, and then it was she who gasped lightly as his lips pressed to hers. 

Erik’s kiss was gentle and tentative at first brush, growing more confident with each pass; a dance he’d known the steps to once, having grown rusty in the intervening years, but not truly forgetting. Their mouths met and parted and met again, and when Christine felt the press of his tongue seeking entrance against her lips, she granted it gladly. Cool fingertips slipped under the hem of her kitten-soft sweater, and her back arched as she sighed against him.

Time seemed to stop moving as they sat there, kissing in the dark, the crackling fire the only sound accompanying their joining. Erik continued to gently caress her lower back as his mouth moved against hers hungrily, his other hand moving up to slide into her hair, cradling the back of her head. Christine leaned back into his touch, breaking their mouths apart. She couldn't prevent the gasp that came from her swollen lips when his mouth moved down the white column of her throat.

She wasn’t sure when he’d moved, but Erik had shifted to face her, had pulled her body tightly to his, and she could feel the long, hard line of him; the firmness of his chest, his jutting hip bones, the hardness of his arousal, flush against her. He was entirely composed of hard lines and angles, it seemed, but his lips were soft, so soft as they moved gently against hers once more.

Christine didn’t remember moving her hands; she’d had both her palms splayed on his chest, but she realized now that she was cupping his masked cheek. Her thumb found a thin band of exposed skin, just behind his ear, and she stroked it gently, feeling him shiver beneath her again. 

_ More _ . She wanted more, she wanted all of him, needed for him to know that she didn’t care about his face or his scars. As Erik’s lips sought hers out once more, her fingers drifted to the back of his head, her fingernail running over the seam of his mask, searching for the opening.

“What are you doing?” His voice was breathless as he pulled back, covering her hand with his own. Christine could see his forehead bunch, could see that his eyes, hazy with desire only a moment before, were narrowed in confusion.

“Take this off,” she murmured, curling her fingers around his. “Please, I want to kiss  _ you _ .”

“What? No!” There was real alarm in his voice, and she watched as his eyes, his lovely eyes, clouded with panic and pain. “No, don’t ask that of me.”

“But Erik, I don’t care about--”

“Please.” 

His voice stopped her. Stopped her words, stopped her heart, stopped her breath. That voice, deep and melodic as ever, wavered with so much agony that it froze her. The butterflies, for the first time that night, had fallen silent, their delicate wings frosted and shattered under the layer of cold that pierced her.

“Please let me have this, please just let me…”

It was her turn again to infer, as his voice broke off.

_ Please let me keep pretending.  _

For all his protestations, he’d not yet released her, Christine realized. His wide, broad hand was still under her sweater, splayed at her back, and he still held her tightly to him. She could still fix this.

_ Your problem isn’t that your dumb, Christine. It's that you're lazy. _

Letting him keep the mask on would be easy, letting herself accept whatever terms he named on intimacy, letting him think she was still afraid and disgusted. He wanted to pretend that he was a whole, undamaged man with a woman like her in his arms, and she...she just wanted him. She wanted him to want  _ her _ , not an idea of her. She was tired of being lazy, Christine decided, tired of taking the easy way out.

Erik’s hand had released hers and wound back into her hair. She felt it tighten there briefly, begging her. Her vision was clouded with tears for moment before they overflowed and fell, shaking her head no.

“I don’t care about this.” Her voice wavered as she caressed the fabric at his cheek, and she sucked in a shuddering breath before continuing. “And I’m tired of pretending.”

This time, when both her hands went to the back of his head to release the mask, he didn’t stop her, but his lovely eyes had slipped shut. They stayed that way as she brought the mask carefully over his head and away, remained shut as her hands came up to cup his bare face. 

Christine kept her touch light as she moved her lips over his sharp cheekbones, over the blunt bridge of his melted nose, across the scaly, puckered texture of his forehead. Despite the tenderness with which she moved, she felt him wince beneath her kiss and she drew back hesitantly.

“Does it still hurt you?” 

Erik didn’t answer, just shook his head minutely. “Good,” she whispered, taking advantage of his still-closed eyes to deliver a feather-light kiss to the corner of his eyelid, where it melted into the skin below. When Christine moved her lips back to his, he was as unresponsive as he’d been at the beginning, and she felt her heart twist with regret, worried that she’d ruined everything.

_ It still doesn’t matter, _ she thought as she sucked his thin lower lip between her two fuller ones. If this was goodbye, she intended to give him a goodbye kiss he would remember.

She couldn’t tell if the noise that ripped from his throat then was a moan or a sob, but she didn’t have time to dwell upon it as he pulled her tightly against him, crushing her mouth in a bruising kiss. 

It was the sound of a soul ripping free, she decided as she felt her own being pulled loose somehow; pulled loose from the morass in which it had been stuck for the past year and a half.

She could fall in love with this man, was more than halfway there already, she knew. She hoped he would come with her, that they could hold hands and face the uncertainty and scariness of all the tomorrows together, but she knew in that moment that with or without him, Christine Daaé needed to return to the land of the living.

They broke apart panting, still clinging tightly to each other. When she looked up, it was to his eyes looking down at her. She thought they appeared to glisten, but it was hard to tell through her own tears. When Erik lowered his mouth to hers once more, the kiss was slow and soft and deep, and when he parted from her, she felt his thumb gently swipe her tears away as they fell. 

“Merry Christmas, Christine,” he whispered into the space between them. 

When her head dropped to his chest it felt like coming home, like she was exactly where she belonged. She didn’t know why she was still crying, didn’t know what tomorrow would bring; all she knew was that she had the overwhelming certainty that his mouth was the only one she was ever meant to kiss again. Christine closed her eyes and breathed him in, his hand rubbing slow, soothing circles at her back. Outside, the snow softly fell.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the chapter I intended to post on Christmas Eve, and this is where the story was supposed to end...then life got real frigging real, and here we are at the end of the month. Soooo...I guess it's a New Year's story now? lol, we'll see!


	6. Chapter 6

“Alright, spill it. Tell me everything.”

Meg pulled her crocheted hat off and swung her glossy dark hair over her shoulder before fixing Christine with a  _ look _ . The coffee house was bursting at the seams with people; offices were closed for the week between Christmas and New Year, students were home from school, mothers were trying to keep children occupied, yet somehow the girls had managed to elbow their way to a small table just as a harried-looking woman with three shrieking children vacated it. 

Shrugging out of her puffy coat, Christine blew the steam across the surface of her cup pensively. She’d made the grave mistake of blurting out that she’d had dinner with the man next door on Christmas Eve, bringing all other conversation to a grinding halt. Meg had been recounting her holiday with her future in-laws before that, but now her sylph-like friend had refused to focus on any other topic until Christine had told her “everything.”

Meg had already been shocked when Christine had agreed to meet for an afternoon of post-holiday sale shopping and coffee when she’d called her the previous day.

“Really?! Oh, wow!”

She felt her brow furrow at her friend’s reaction when she’d asked what time they should meet. “Damn, Meg. Did you want me to say no?”

“No! It’s just...you haven’t been much up for going out, Christine. It’ll be so good to hang out again.”

The next afternoon, they had walked through the bustling mall together, arms laden with bags, talking and laughing as they had in the carefree days of undergrad. Christine had sat in a cushy armchair, guarding their bags in the high-end department store fitting room as Meg tried on several New Year’s Eve dresses, coming out to model and give Christine veto power. 

She herself had found a thin, lilac-colored sweater dotted with tiny, delicate pearls and a sweetheart neckline that Meg had urged her to purchase. 

“You need this, Chris! You’ve got the tits for it, and it’s great with your coloring. Treat yo self!”

She’d laughed and blushed, but held onto the sweater as they browsed. It was nearly as soft as her blue one, she thought.

When they passed by the lotion store, two bags heavier, Christine stopped short. “Wait, I have a gift card I want to use.”

 

She’d moved past the endless rows and bins of discount body butter and fragrance sprays until she’d entered the side of the store that sold the candles.

“Can I help you find what you’re looking for today?” chirped an energetic, aproned sales associate.

“Yes, I want one of the three wicks in the jars, it’s called--”

Christine cut off, her cheeks coloring, suddenly understanding just how much thought he had put into the gifts he’d given her. 

“...um, it--it’s called Sweater Weather,” she stammered. 

_ Stay warm this winter!  _ his note had read. The cashmere sweater and cuddly scarf, the cookies and hot chocolate, the firewood, the appropriately-named candle…

 

_ He was precious.  _

Precious and an idiot, she thought as tears burned at her eyes. Shopping for an imaginary girlfriend when the real one was his for the taking.

“Stupid, stupid man,” she muttered as she stood in line, three of the candles that reminded her of him in her basket. 

Christine had realized, as she buried her face into soft, red chenille on Christmas morning, that the smell of him she’d concocted in her head--sharp, fresh juniper and minty cold--was influenced by the candle. She knew now that if she pressed her face to his long neck and breathed deeply, it would be warm and spicy and inherently kissable...but the candle smell was intrinsically linked to him in her mind, and she wanted to ensure that she’d  have it on hand.

_ Have it on hand to pull out and torture yourself. Nice plan, idiot. _

By the time she rejoined Meg at the front of the store, she’d shaken off the threat of tears and shoved the negative voice and any thoughts of Erik to the back of her mind. She needed to focus on self-improvement, she reminded herself sternly.

_ New year, new you.  _

 

It wasn’t until the girls had decided to take a coffee break that things had gone rapidly downhill.

“I feel so terrible about Christmas Eve, Chris, you have no idea. Did you have to throw a ton of food away? I hope you kept it all for leftovers...you can think about what a shitty friend I am every time you a have a leftover turkey sandwich.”

Christine had blushed and hurriedly asked about how Mrs. Giry was doing, not wanting to think about the leftovers she’d carefully sealed up and placed in someone else’s refrigerator. Fortunately, her friend took the bait as they traversed the heated sidewalks of the outdoor portion of the mall, on their way to the parking lot.

“That old goat? She’s fine. My ass, however, has a mother-shaped pain on its side.”

Meg recounted the way her mother--a force to be reckoned with, as long as Christine had known her--had slipped down the icy front steps at her daughter’s condo, fracturing her hip in the fall. Surgery had been a quick turnaround, and Mrs. Giry had already been home for several days. Meg was staying with her mother during her recuperation, and claimed to be seriously contemplating smothering her with a bed pillow.

“She’s already telling the physical therapist that the exercises are too easy for her, and does he have any idea the core strength ballerinas must possess?”

Christine laughed at the image, clearly able to imagine the hapless therapist’s cowering response. As they stowed their bags in the trunk of Meg’s car before heading down the plaza to the coffee shop, the conversation moved onto the brief snippet of time Meg had spent with her fiance and his family on Christmas Day, chattering away about aunts and uncles and cousins, people Christine would likely only ever meet once at the wedding and then never see again. 

After the the past year and the quiet night spent in Erik’s home, she wondered how she had ever been so used to the constant prattle of other people.

“Still, I do feel really terrible. Did you at least make yourself a mimosa breakfast on Christmas Day?”

She flushed at Meg’s words.  _ Not even a little _ . Christine had woken on Christmas Day wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and spicy-smelling bliss. She’d sighed in contentment, snuggling deeper into her pillow until her head had connected with something hard. It wasn’t until her eyes opened that the small smile on her mouth faded as she’d taken in her surroundings. She’s been in her own house, on her own sofa, bumping her head against the arm. A small fire burned in the fireplace, warming her cheeks.

For a nausea-inducing moment, Christine had thought she’d dreamed the whole thing.

Dinner with Erik, singing with him, the antics of his little cat...she’d closed her eyes and breathed deeply, attempting to marshall her memories...it couldn’t possibly have been a dream, could it?

No, she’d decided, not when her eyes felt tight from crying, not when she could still practically feel the rough, uneven texture of his burns beneath her lips, or the firm, heated pressure of his erection pressed against her as they kissed in the dark. It couldn’t possibly have been a dream, not when she still smelled him so clearly.

When she’d struggled to a sitting position, fighting to free her arms from the confines they were secured within, she’d realized it was the red chenille blanket from Erik’s sofa wrapped around her.

Christine had sat for a long time staring into the fire that morning, pulling the blanket that smelled like him around her snugly. He must have carried her home, she’d deduced, wrapped in the blanket. Her keys had been in the pocket of her coat, and when she’d finally pulled herself from her prone position, sure enough, she’d found her coat laid over the arm of a chair. Her keys had been left prominently in the middle of the kitchen counter, her cloth wagon, folded upright, sat nearby.

She half expected to find the leftovers she’d placed in his refrigerator put into her own, but he hadn’t gone quite that far in erasing her presence from his home.

She’d fallen asleep against him, she realized; had fallen asleep as he stroked her back in front of the fire, after they’d kissed. Christine remembered pressing a dozen small kisses to his bad shoulder as her eyes grew heavier, kisses he surely couldn’t have felt through his sweater. She remembered the feeling of his lips ghosting over her hair, breathing deeply as he nosed her tumble of curls, the way he’d held her so tenderly against him.

It definitely hadn’t been a dream.

But he’d brought her home all the same, rather than letting her sleep the night in his arms, or even depositing her there in front of the fire… _ Still _ , she’d reminded herself firmly as she’d moved back to the sofa, winding his red blanket around her shoulders once more,  _ it had been a wonderful night _ . Maybe with more crying than she’d planned for, but she’d had fun with him, they’d made music together and they’d kissed.

“No, no mimosas...I drank a lot of wine the night before,” she said lightly with a laugh and tried to steer the conversation yet again to different waters.

Meg could not be deterred. “Oh, Christine! I feel so bad! I hate the thought of you being all alone on Christmas, just a bottle of wine and a--”

“I wasn’t alone,” she blurted, feeling more than a little defensive, which she knew was silly. “I--I had dinner with my neighbor.”

Meg had sagged in relief at this news, her guilt at having bailed on their dinner plans at the last minute being somewhat assuaged. “Oh thank goodness! That’s so nice...was it that family across the street with all the kids?”

“N-no,” she’d stammered, feeling heat spread up her neck. “The man next door...we were both home and...and we had dinner together.”

“Oh,” Meg blinked in surprise. “I didn’t know you even talked to the person next door. Is he nice? Did you guys go out somewhere?” Meg brows were knit together at Christine’s admission, and the heat at her neck spread to her cheeks.

“No...I went to his house, and brought the food I’d made. Do you think we need to go to the pay station? I’d hate to come back from coffee and you’ve got a ticket...maybe we should go double check the time on the--”

“Christine!”  Meg’s eyes were bright, and her perfectly arched brows were disappearing into her hair as they raised. “You are blushing like a tomato! Funny, I don’t think you’ve ever even mentioned the man next door, but you spent the holiday with him and can’t talk about it without bursting into flames?”

“It was just dinner,” she protested weakly, already knowing she’d lost. When Meg got  _ that _ look in her eye, there was no keeping anything from her. She wondered if she ought to slip her friend’s  fiancé  an anonymous note in warning.

“Uh huh, just dinner. Girl, you have been holding out on me, and I want  _ details _ .”

Now, sitting before her friend in the crowded coffee shop, Christine blew on her cup and wished she had just kept quiet. She wrinkled her nose at the first sip of her hot chocolate; another thing he’d ruined for her. She’d never be able to enjoy the guilty pleasure the same way, not after having tasted it on his lips and tongue, mingled with wine and heat and hunger, would always think of how much better it had tasted then.

“There’s nothing to tell,” she mumbled into her cup, after Meg’s pronouncement of wanting to hear  _ everything _ . “We were both home alone, and I had a whole meal already made. We had dinner together.” Christine shrugged, looking up to her friend at last. “And that’s it. I haven’t talked to him since.”

Meg frowned. “Well that doesn’t explain why you were stammering and blushing like a teenager. How long have you been talking to him?”

She scoffed at the question, swallowing another unfortunate gulp of her sadly lacking drink. “He lives next door, Meg. I’ve been talking to him since I moved in.” An image of that first terrible night in his yard passed through her mind, and she pushed it away guiltily. She’d hoped that what they’d shared on Christmas Eve would have erased that night from existence, but she’d been wrong, evidently.

Meg’s eyes were narrowed in suspicion. She was more like her mother than she’d ever care to hear voiced, Christine thought. “So how did you wind up over there? Just knocked on his door with your turkey in hand?”

Christine felt the blush move upwards to the top of her head. That was exactly what she’d done after all, but hearing someone say it aloud was mortifying. Meg merely raised an eyebrow at her newest display of embarrassment and waited.

“Yes, that’s basically what happened, although it was a capon, not a turkey, thank you very much...he shoveled my driveway for me, so dinner was the least I could do.” Christine heard the note of defensiveness in her voice and knew she was doing herself no favors. “Besides, I had an entire dinner already made, was I just supposed to throw it all away?”

_ There you go. Bring it back around, make her feel guilty. _

Meg, unfortunately, was not amenable to Christine’s deflection.

“He shoveled your driveway?! That’s so sweet! Okay, so you go to his house with dinner, and then what? Candles and romantic music?”

“Oh my God! It was nothing like that!” Christine could hear how weak she sounded, how thoroughly unconvincing. Meg was never going to believe her lies. “We ate dinner together and it was fine.” 

“It was fine,” Meg parroted back skeptically. “Do you even hear yourself? ‘It was fine?’ It was more than fine, from the way that you’re blushing. Is he super hot? Or like, sexy suburban daddy hot?”

Christine squirmed in chair, feeling her resolve break down. “It  _ was _ fine. We ate dinner and then I sang for him, he’s a musician too…” 

Her pulse thrummed in her ears as she felt herself flame scarlet once more, words crowning in her throat, determined to see the light of day, with or without her approval. Meg was already commenting on the _ then I sang for him _ , her eyebrow raised so high it was practically hovering in the air above her head, before Christine cut her off in a burst.

“...and then we had dessert and made out on his sofa.” 

The words rushed out, leaving her feeling relieved and deflated once they were birthed into existence.  _ There _ . It was real now, it had really happened. She’d just said so.

Meg’s mouth had dropped open as Christine burned, swallowing a mouthful of her drink to occupy her hands. “You made out with...oh my God, Christine! _‘It_ _was_ _fine’_ she said.” Meg mimicked her in a squeaky, high-pitched voice and Christine closed her eyes, wishing she could rip out her loose tongue and strangle herself with it.

“So tell me about this guy! I can’t believe you’ve never mentioned him.” Meg’s dark eyes sparkled with excitement at the fresh gossip. “How old is he? Is he cute? What’s he do? Wait, most importantly--kissing skills?”

Her stomach heaved at Meg’s barrage of questions. She couldn’t be upset, she knew that’s what friends did, but she didn’t want to talk about Erik, didn’t want to think about him or the feel of his soft lips moving on hers. 

_ Kissing skills _

_ Excellent!!!  _ she wanted to shout. Sweet and shy at first, turning desperately hungry as the fire crackled in the grate, a pale imitation of the heat that had ignited between the two of them.

_ Is he hot? _

_ Yes _ , her mind supplied automatically, making her flush once more, thinking of his tightly defined body and how many times she’d fantasized about being with him, but Christine knew her friend well enough to know Erik's melted face and extensive scarring wouldn't fall under the  _ hot _ category. She didn’t want to talk about his face or his scars and injuries with Meg, feeling oddly protective. 

Mostly though, she didn't want to dwell on the silence that had emanated from the house next door since she’d woken on her own sofa on Christmas Day.

“There’s nothing to tell, Meg,” she murmured softly. “Like I said, we haven’t talked since then. I haven’t even seen him.”

The girls were quiet for a long moment, as the noise of the coffee shop bustled around them. Near the door, a couple stood in line, leaning into each other. Christine watched as the red-headed young woman tilted her head back to peer up at the tall, dark-haired man whose chest she leaned on. Smiling, he leaned down and brushed her forehead in a kiss before they stepped forward to order, and Christine felt her stomach clench.

_ So, so stupid, Christine.  _

In truth, the silence from next door had felt like a deafening roar for the past week. Not only had Erik completely rearranged his schedule, throwing off her spying habit, but he barely seemed to be downstairs at all. The small light over the kitchen sink stayed on, and she’d seen Bibi half a dozen times, drinking from her water bowl, eating her food, and sitting at the back door plotting. he had never made an appearance, and from what Christine had been able to tell, the light in the big room off the kitchen was off as well.

Erik had left his house two days after Christmas, although she’d missed seeing him from her window dressed in one of his well-tailored suits. Christine had just been turning away from bringing in her mail when the sound of the garage opening next door caught her attention. She’d stood back and watched through the lace curtain as he’d pulled out, not returning from wherever it was he'd gone until late the following afternoon.

The smiling, copper-skinned man’s car had appeared the day after Erik had returned, five days since their dinner, and had not left until very late that night.  _ Nasir? Nadir? _ Christine couldn’t remember the man’s name, only the way she had laughed at Erik’s annoyance over his last visit. She’s looked out her window to his car several times the previous day, and it was only when she’d gone to turn out the porch light, close to midnight, that she’d seen his car gone.

The call from Meg had been a nice distraction from peering out her window, even though she’d done her best to keep busy throughout the week. 

“God, that sucks. Why are men such trash? I’m sorry that your first time back on the horse was with such a douchebag, Chris. You should get a dog and we can train it to shit on his lawn.”

Christine laughed that stranger’s laugh again, bright and shimmering, trying to imagine an outraged Bibi and her owner, glaring at Christine and some exuberant puppy as they stopped outside his house.  _ That’s not fair to the cat, _ she thought, still laughing.

She knew Meg was wrong, but didn't bother correcting her. The silence from Erik was her own fault, she was certain. She shouldn't have pushed him to take off the mask, shouldn't have made the moment as intimate and emotionally fraught as she had. They’d both been lonely and horny; she could have left well enough alone and they would have fooled around on the sofa without it being the tense tear-fest it had turned into, and maybe he’d still be speaking to her now. 

_ Oh well _ , she told herself decisively. No more regrets.

When she and Meg had parted, Christine felt as though she'd taken another significant step. She’d gone out, she’d been social. She bought herself nice things, had made the experience with Erik real by talking about it. It was another good day, she told herself firmly as she opened her front door. Tomorrow was New Year’s Eve, and then she’d have even more incentive to continue the slightly better habits she’d put into place in the past six days.

As she’d stared into the fire on Christmas Day, she’d thought about her father, and what he would say about everything that had transpired in the year since his death. Her father had always wanted more for her; she knew, had struggled to give her the opportunity to be happy and successful. He would be very sad to see his little girl sink into a pit of bottomless depression and despair and never rise up.

A single father struggling to juggle the responsibilities of work and parenthood with little help, her father had taught at the community college Monday through Friday, despite the fact that he could have made a bit more money at a more prestigious school, toiling at the symphony on weekends. The pay, the permanent bags under his eyes--it had never mattered. 

Their little house was far from grand--a small, cape cod-style bungalow with a tiny yard and a dingy paint job, but it was on the edge of a good neighborhood with a great school district. 

Keeping his daughter in a good school with endless opportunities had been Gus Daae’s r aison d'être her entire childhood. Christine had done him proud all those years, receiving excellent grades, singing with the symphony’s youth choir, being active in her school’s musicals...He’d told her, as he’d withered away in his bed towards the end, that the proudest moment of his entire life had been when she’d crossed the stage to receive her graduate degree.

“Not the day I was born?” she’d asked with a watery smile. It had been a good afternoon, that day, when her father was mostly lucid and not twisting in pain. She cherished all of those little snippets of time she’d been able to steal from Death’s hands in the final weeks.

“Oh no, that day was the happiest day. I too afraid to be proud. Endless possibility was all I saw in your little eyes.”

“What about the day I got married?” she’d chided him, smoothing the coverlet and ensuring the pain pump hadn’t become lost in the sheets.

“People get married every day,” her father had said waving a dismissive hand. “All I want is for you to be happy, princess. If that’s with an investment banker or with the man who plays the clarinet outside the theater, it doesn’t matter...as long as you’re happy. But you can’t rely on other people for that, only you can decide what makes you happiest. Your degree wasn’t just some piece of paper put on file at the courthouse, you worked hard for that, don’t you forget it.”

Christine had been shocked at his words, she remembered, not wanting to remind him that the clarinetist was a busker and the investment banker was already his son-in-law, but then he’d taken her hand in his gnarled, bony one, and her eyes had filled with tears. 

“There’s nothing you can’t do Christine, and I’m so proud of you. All that possibility I saw the day you were born is still there in your eyes, baby. You can do anything you set your mind to. The only one who can keep you from being happy is you.”

She’d thought back to that conversation on Christmas Day, as she wrapped herself in Erik’s blanket, wondering if her father had somehow known all that was to come to pass.  The photograph that she’d found in the box of Christmas decorations had been placed on her mantle, and she’d stared up at his smiling face with tears rolling down her cheeks and a smile on her face.

She’d worked hard to make him proud for too many tears, and she wasn’t going to throw it all away now.  _ The only one who can keep you from being happy is you _ . She’d remembered her words to herself the previous night, as Erik’s kisses pulled her out of the apathy she’d sunk into.  _ It’s time to start living again. _

Overall, Christine thought, she was pleased with the progress she’d made in just a short amount of time.

The icy blue she’d chosen for her bedroom walls all those months ago transformed the space from bare and sterile into a comforting oasis--or at least, that was how it felt to her. She’d opened up the windows, despite the frigid post-holiday temperature, and wiped the empty depression from her room in a wash of color, belting out  _ Before the Parade Passes By _ as she did so. 

She’d ordered a lovely new bedspread as she’d sat there wrapped in his blanket, dove grey with pintuck detailing, and fancy hotel-style pillows that would arrive the day after she’d painted the room. It was high time to start unfucking her life, she’d thought, giving the front wall a second coat.

_ I need a goal again _

_ I need a drive again _

_ I wanna feel my heart comin’ alive again _

 

The closest opera company was over an hour away, but the neighboring city had the symphony, and the symphony had a chorus. The chorus she’d sung with as a child, the symphony her father had performed with for decades. She’d emailed an inquiry into the next auditions, attaching her headshot from grad school and making sure to mention how many fond memories she had of growing up at the symphony hall, and her father’s many years of service there. 

_Any_ _leg_ _up_ , she told herself.

The name-dropping paid off, as she’d received a quick response that, although the formal auditions weren’t until spring, she was welcome to come in on any Saturday afternoon, after the New Year to sing for the director. Buoyed by the response, she’d sent an email off to the opera company as well.  _ Who cares if it’s a bit of a drive _ …

Each day since the morning she’d woken up alone on her sofa, she’d sang for the better part of an afternoon. Sometimes she’d sing along with a recording, feeling the swell of a full orchestra or band beneath her, other times she’d provide her own meager accompaniment on the small upright that had belonged to her great aunt. Opera, showtunes, jazz standards, old country songs...nothing was safe from being added to her repertoire that week, as she threw open the windows and let her voice fill the small space of her empty house, a space that felt a little less empty with music.

Christine had let the agony of despair over her terrible year grip her too tightly, had allowed the song in her heart to die, as the sight of her father’s picture and the remembrance of his voice and violin would send her into a tailspin of grief.

Now though...now that she had found her music again, could sing and hear the sound of a solitary violin or a full symphony without breaking down, she could resurrect him. Resurrection through the greatest gift he’d given her, the love of music that he’d passed on. The tears she’d shed at Erik’s house had been a breaking point, perhaps, sharing music with someone else had freed her, and once she’s started singing, Christine found she couldn’t stop.

_ All is healed _

_ All is health _

_ High summer holds the earth _

_ Hearts all whole _

She couldn’t be responsible for the man next door’s happiness, anymore than he could be responsible for hers, she thought as she sang through the Barber art song that she’d performed for him on Christmas Eve. She had hoped he’d come with her, but it was his choice to make. 

Christine thought she’d done an excellent job keeping thoughts of Erik at bay, as she set to making her house the first step in her new start. Her laundry room counter was completely cleared, the hamper in her bedroom and in the bathroom empty. Her closet had been emptied, and the clothes that now hung on her frame were bagged up and put on on the porch for collection. An appointment had been made for a contractor to quote her on upgrading the HVAC and waterproofing her basement come spring. She was moving forward.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve it had been  _ Me and Bobby McGee _ that she’d pounded out on the piano to the best of her meager ability, as an unseasonal drizzle hammered a steady beat outside her open kitchen door.

_ Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose  _

When she’d finished the song, Christine rose from the piano and shut the door, deciding she ought to get her shopping done before the stores all closed early for the holiday.  She’d finally gone grocery shopping for more than frozen meals, and her pantry cupboard was stocked with normal kitchen essentials. 

There had been a festive endcap of fast grab-and-go New Year’s Eve treats--cheese balls and fancy crackers, cured meats wrapped in cellophane, pre-cooked chicken wings and flavored cashews--at the front of the store, she saw once she’d entered to the sounds of Christmas music still piping in over the speakers. Christine moved her cart past it.  _ That’s not real food, and you’re a grown up _ . 

One of her resolutions for the new year was to start grocery shopping regularly and cooking for herself at least several times a week...making food was a sign of love and caring, after all, and who better to start caring for than herself?

Tonight, though...tonight she was going to allow herself to wallow in self pity one last time. 

Meg had, of course, attempted to strong arm her into going to the swanky hotel party she was attending with her fiance, but Christine had no desire to be a third wheel. After firmly shutting down the conversation on Meg’s second attempt, she’d resigned herself to another quiet night at home. _No_ , she corrected. _Not_ _just_ _another_ _night_. The _last_ night she’d be wallowing, the last night of the old her. Tomorrow, the new Christine would be getting out of bed.

Her favorite frozen mac and cheese was placed in the cart, alongside the fresh produce and meat. She was pretty sure she’d be able to get one more viewing of a silly Christmas movie where the girl from Full House manages to meet the real Santa Claus and fall for his real estate agent son in before the clock struck midnight, and picked up a box of chocolate eclairs from the cooler to accompany her wallowing.

.

.

The sharp rap on her door made her jump. Christine peered out from around the wall of her kitchen, where she’d just been about to pull her mac and cheese from the oven. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and certainly not this late. Glancing at the clock on her stove, she saw that it was just before seven, although the sky had long grown dark.

As she crept to the front hall hesitantly, the knock came again, softer this time, more uncertain. A shiver rippled up her spine, and she lunged forward to throw the door open. 

He had already backed down the steps, was turning to move away entirely, but froze as the door opened.

For a moment that felt like it lasted an eternity, they stared at each other in silence. Christine watched as his throat bobbed beneath the mask, felt her own lungs tighten as she held her breath.

“I saw your light was on,” he sad in a rush, breaking the silence at last. Christine took note of the way he fidgeted, twisting his fingers together before another hard swallow.

“...I thought if we were both home alone, y-you might want to have dinner with me.”


	7. Chapter 7

“I saw your light was on,” he said in a rush, breaking the silence at last. Christine took note of the way he fidgeted, twisting his fingers together before another hard swallow.

“...I thought if we were both home alone, y-you might want to have dinner with me.”

His voice, always so smooth and rich, wavered with uncertainty. Any hurt she had been holding onto from his silence since Christmas Eve dissolved at that little stammer, so out of character for him, it seemed, and at his echo of the same words she’d used at his door the week prior.

Before she could answer, his next words came out on an exhale, and Christine watched as his shoulders sagged slightly. “...but you probably have plans.”

For the first time in a week, she felt the flutter of wings, tiny and delicate, moving through her. He seemed to be anticipating her rejection, was already braced for it, and her heart squeezed. It was all she do not to leap down the steps and throw herself into his arms.

_ No, you’re not going to do that. He kissed you and then went AWOL for a whole week. Make him grovel.  _ Christine steeled herself. Ignoring his words, she made a show of looking past him as she leaned on her door frame. 

“I don’t see a wagon out there.”

“No.” He gave a little laugh then, raw and self deprecating, before pinning her with remorseful eyes. “I’m not as brave as you.” 

Christine felt her smile soften as he shifted from foot to foot nervously. ”I-I didn't think you’d want to see me,” he continued in a quiet, low voice.

_ Okay, forget making him grovel. Bring him inside and ask if he wants to stay forever.  _

She shivered as the wind cut through her long cardigan, which she wore over just a thin t-shirt and leggings. “That's not at all true...but it's freezing out here, will you just come inside?”

She offered him a tiny smile as she stood back from the door, hoping he recognized how completely the tables had turned. Erik moved hesitantly up the stairs, pausing before crossing the landing as though he were fighting an internal war with himself with every step. The moment he finally crossed the threshold of her door, Christine let go of the breath she’d been holding. 

_ Close the door and lock it. This is where he lives now.  _

“Now...I don't know what you're talking about,” she murmured, feeling a curious mixture of terror and elation as his eyes roved around the living room, taking in her space for the first time. She said a silent thankful prayer for having made the house habitable. “I never said I didn't want to see you, and I don't have plans tonight.” 

Erik had stiffened when she’d begun speaking, the tense set of his shoulders relaxing ever so slightly when she denied his assumption of not wanting to see him. 

“...but I  _ did _ just take my dinner out of the oven.”

If it had been anyone else, Christine might have laughed at his resigned slump. Instead, she felt her stomach tighten at the way he began to turn back to the door he’d only just stepped through.

“Of course...I'm sorry for disturbing your dinner then. Goodnight, Christine.”

Even emphasis on both syllables again, a glissando on the  _ s _ and a slight lean on the  _ t. _ ..she shivered, unsure if she'd ever tire of hearing her name cross his lips.

“Erik!” she cried in exasperation when his hand landed on the doorknob. She thought she witnessed a corresponding ripple move through him, and wondered if he had the same reaction to hearing his name from her.

“Erik,” she began softer, smiling to see the tremor in his shoulders again, “I was just saying...if you give me a minute, I can bring it over as a side? It’s very sophisticated, and will pair nicely with whatever you’ve made, I assure you. But I’ll leave the wine up to you this time.”

As she spoke, she crossed the short distance between them and laid a light hand on his arm, tugging him gently back into the living room. To her relief, he didn't resist. Christine glanced down at her self then, wrinkling her nose at what she was wearing.

“First you have to give five minutes to change, I wasn’t planning on being seen by anyone. Make yourself comfortable, please.”

“You don't need to change,” he argued. She rolled her eyes with a smile.

“I’m a mess!--”

“--You look perfect.”

Christine flushed at his words, spoken simultaneously with her own.  _ Perfect, in a ratty cardigan and leggings? LOCK THE DOOR _ ! She managed to ignore the overly enthusiastic voice in her head, releasing his arm. 

“Please,” she murmured. “Make yourself at home.”  _ And stay forever!  _ “I’ll be down in a just a few, I promise.”

Christine didn't wait for his reaction before she turned and bolted up the staircase. 

_ Okay, be cool. Stop sweating! Cute underwear…  _

Nearly tripping as she peeled herself out of her leggings, Christine fumbled through her lingerie drawer until she came up with black mesh panties with a soft lace trim.  _ Perfect _ , she thought. Her black lace bra wasn’t an exact match, but she didn’t think he’d notice if things went that far.

_ Who are you kidding? That man is going to see your underwear if you have to tie him to the chair.  _

Hoping it wouldn’t come to that, she pulled a back flippy skirt out of her newly organized closet and her new pearl-accented sweater. Grey, over-the-knee socks and a spritz of her soft perfume and... _ perfect _ , she thought again, peering into the full-length mirror on her closet door, fluffing out her curls.

The skirt hit just at her knee, hiding the true nature of the the thick, cable-knit socks. Christine flushed at the thought of his beautiful, expressive eyes widening in surprise as her thighs were bared to his exploring fingers, just before they clouded with lust, as he sought higher...

A touch of blush, a swipe of mascara, and a smear of pink lip gloss after she brushed her teeth, and then she was ready. She tossed her toothbrush and a travel-sized bottle of mouthwash into a small clutch that she could stow her keys in. Hesitating, she wondered if she’d be able to fold down a t-shirt into the clutch before shaking the thought off. _You_ _can_ _wear_ _one_ _of_ _his_ _shirts if you’re still there in the_ _morning_.

If she was going back to his house, this time she was going prepared.

Christine went back down the steps slowly, hearing the soft sounds of her aunt’s old upright drifting up the stairs.

The sight of Erik seated at her piano made her breath catch, and she wondered if she looked just as right in his home as she he looked sitting there in hers.

“This is old,” he said over the soft strains of Moon River. “Have you always had it or was it left in the house?”

“In the house, it belonged to my great aunt. She’s the one who taught me to play when I was young...well, if you can call the noise I make playing.”

Erik grinned, his eyes bright for the first time since he'd come in. “I’d call it a certain  _ kind _ of playing.” 

She laughed in outrage, crossing behind him to the kitchen where she transferred the mac and cheese to a tray and covering it in foil. When she’d turned from the refrigerator, after pulling out her miniature eclairs, she found Erik standing in the middle of the room, staring at her with an open mouth. She watched his eyes rake over her before dropping back to her stocking-clad feet for the space of a heartbeat. His jaw snapped shut as soon she faced him, and his throat bobbed again under the mask.

“If you can carry this, I’m ready,” she announced in a voice far calmer than she felt, grabbing the red blanket from the back of the sofa. Blood thundered in her ears under the heavy, delicious weight of his gaze. “Let’s go.”

.

.

“Do you like seafood?" he asked suddenly, his forehead creased beneath the mask. Christine took the glass of wine he’d poured her with a smile, stroking the purring cat who’d settled onto her lap as soon as she’d sat on the edge of the sofa.

The walk to his house had been completed in silence, although Christine did slip her arm through his at a particularly sharp gust of wind, after exiting her small porch. As he'd done every time she'd initiated physical contact, Erik stiffened but didn't pull away.  _ Good enough _ , she’d thought, making a show of shivering as he solicitously kept her pressed tightly to his side. 

They’d stayed entwined until he disentangled himself to unlock his front door, just as another gust of wind cut through her coat. The mental image of Erik carrying her through the snow, cuddled in his his blanket and secure in his arms, was suddenly a lot more appealing to her than it had been for the previous six days.

“I do, actually." Christine felt her smile widen as he sighed in relief. “Is that what we're having? What if I would have said no?” She couldn't help teasing him, loving the flush that crept up the unscarred side of his neck to the shell of his unblemished ear.

“Oh, I had a backup plan, rest assured." 

Laughter, seeming more her own and less belonging to a stranger a bit more every day, echoed across the acoustics of the big room. “And did Miss Bibi help pick out a very fresh fish?” The cat responded by pawing at Christine’s sweater as she purred and Erik snorted in disgust. 

“Such a little traitor...No, not fish...lobster, if that’s okay?”

“Lobster! Do you hear that, Habibti? Very fancy.”

Erik’s thin lips curled into a smile at her words, recognizing the game she was playing.

“Well...winning oneself back into a beautiful woman’s good graces feels like a go big or go home moment,” he said lightly, turning away as the pink ear deepened to red.

The butterflies immediately took wing, and Christine practically vibrated with their movement. She felt heat at her cheeks and a smile stretch her mouth.

“You don't have to win back what you never lost,” she said breezily, “but I'll happily let you put forth the effort and grovel.”

For the next thirty minutes, they engaged in the same easy, teasing banter they had on Christmas. Light and superficial, neither of them acknowledged what had happened on Christmas, nor the lack of communication since. 

When his phone vibrated across the dining room table where he’d discarded it, she jumped in the seat she’d taken there while Erik moved around the kitchen. The cat was similarly startled, leaping from where she’d been perched on Christine’s lap, and darting off down the darkened hallway. 

Erik reappeared to snatch the phone up from table, answering it tersely.

“What do you want?” she overheard him snarl. “...that’s because I’m at home.” 

His back stiffened, and Christine was certain that for the briefest moment he’d glanced to her out of the corner of his eye. 

“Yes,” he gritted out through clenched teeth. “I swear to God, if you call me again…”

She was positive she was able to hear laughter coming through the phone as Erik disconnected, not even bothering to finish his threat to the person on the other line. 

_ Nasir _ . The smiling man was the one on the phone, she was sure, and had the prickling sensation that the tense “ _ Yes _ ” Erik had spat was in reference to her. Christine smiled broadly as he turned back to where she sat. 

“Work call?” she asked innocently, giggling at his sharp exhale and eyeroll. Her laughter caught in her throat when he pulled out the chair adjacent to hers, rather than across the table at a safer distance.

“Yes.” 

She could have needled him, knowing it was a lie, but any words Christine might have thought of parrying back were instantly forgotten, along with her ability to breathe. The whisper-soft touch of his fingertips at her wrist as he examined her bracelet made the butterflies break out in a frenzied panic, and she worried one might manage to fly up her throat.

“Birthstone? Aquamarine?”

“Mmhm,” she squeaked. _Get_ _yourself_ _together_! she mentally chastised, forcing herself to draw a breath. “March eleventh.”

“Pisces?”

Christine nodded, unable to look away from the thin line of his lips. “What about you?”

“May fifteenth. Taurus.”

His breath was warm, and she realized they'd once more leaned into each other unconsciously, each drawn to the other like a magnet.

“Is that good? Are those signs friends, or are we destined to bicker and steal each other's pets for all time?”

Erik's responding chuckle was low and warm and sent a rush of warmth through her core. Christine pressed her thighs together, ignoring the tingling his nearness ignited, and tried to control her breathing.

“I'm not sure,” he murmured. “But there are some books in the front room. Let me finish getting the food out while you check, and you can report your findings while we eat. Bibi hates wearing a collar, but if we must, we must.”

Christine laughed at his serious tone. Despite his somber voice, his eyes were bright and the corner of his mouth twitched, and she again felt it was all she could do to not just lean in and kiss him then and there.  _ Just get it over with!  _ “Do you need any help in there?”

“Nope, you’re not lifting a finger. I’m groveling, remember?”

She wasn’t sure when she’d become a giggler, she’d certainly never been one in the past, but  lately Christine found that effervescent laughter was always hovering a breath away...at least it seemed that way, when she was with Erik.

“That’s right! I’m the guest of honor. Wait, what was my other choice?” she asked suddenly, straightening up. “What was your backup plan? Did you already make it?”

“Stuffed chicken breasts, and yes. I figured poultry was a safe option, but it didn’t seem especially celebratory.”

“Stuffed with something delicious?” she asked, wondering how much time he’d spent preparing elaborate meals for her. The butterflies had merged into one large, tremoring mass in her chest, and she blurted out her next words before she could over think them and change her mind.

“Why don’t you put the chicken in the fridge and we can have that later this week.” 

She held her breath, watching his adam’s apple bob again as he nodded wordlessly. _ Date number three! _ she told herself, rising in triumph. “Which way to the books?”

The front hallway was black, a small glow emanating from the room just off the foyer the only source of light. Christine had found herself grasping for Erik’s sleeve as he’d led her through the stygian darkness when they’d first entered the house; now she moved back down the long, dark hallway as he’d instructed, mentally picking out a small night light she could place there. There had been some pretty stained-glass ones she’d admired shopping yesterday...turning into the room he’d directed her to, she gasped.

The room was lined in bookshelves, all stuffed to bursting. Spinning in slow circles, she pushed the unfavorable Beauty and the Beast comparisons from her mind as she tried to take in the titles on the shelves. 

There seemed to be every genre represented, although she noted that the suspense and thriller novels had more wear on the spines than those of the horror and romance variety. Science, nature, philosophy, an entire shelf of books on composers, another on art. An endless array of architecture tomes, the classics, antiques, first editions. In the corner was a well-worn leather club chair and ottoman, the small table next to it housing a decanter of dark amber liquid and a rocks glass, and the tiny lamp that had caused the light from the hallway. 

Once she’d located one of the astrology books,  _ everything is alphabetized by genre, he’s a precious type A baby _ , Christine curled up in the chair and breathed in deeply, trying to catch the warm, spicy smell of him. She closed her eyes with a smile, attempting to envision Erik here, his long legs stretched out, reading one of the many books on the shelves. 

The image in her head was sweet and perfect and so, so lonely. The breath she’d been taking choked her, the threat of tears tightening her eyes. 

All alone with books and music and his work, trying to be as invisible as possible, as she sat all alone with her poor eating habits and bad television and overwhelming despair. 

And yet, for whatever reason, he’d let her in.

She couldn’t be responsible for his happiness, Christine reminded herself, pushing her tongue into the roof of her mouth and forbidding herself from crying again. She couldn’t be responsible for his happiness, and he couldn’t be responsible for hers...but she thought that maybe they could each be the cure for the other’s loneliness.

When she re-entered the great room, book in hand and a smile on her face, Erik had the table set. “I have excellent news,” she announced. “According to this, Bibi doesn’t need to live in fear.”

“Well that  _ is _ a relief,” he deadpanned with sparkling eyes. “I’m saving this,” he lifted up a serving bowl whose contents she couldn’t discern as she reseated herself, “for our chicken so that your incredibly sophisticated offering has a chance to shine. I put it back in the oven to warm, if that’s okay?”

Christine told him about her astrological findings as they ate their salad course. Bibi wound her way through the chair legs, rubbing a fuzzy head insistently against Christine’s ankles.

“...so all that’s good, right? If we meet any Pisces/Taurus couples, we’ll have to let them know they can expect to be sexually, emotionally, and spiritually compatible.”

Erik nodded seriously. “That's important. We should definitely let them know.”

He listened as she read from the book, each of them pretending they were not the ones being referred to, listened as she chattered about painting her room as he cleared their salad plates and carried the main course to the table. He cocked his head and asked questions as she told him about the two contractors she had coming by to give her estimates on the work she wanted done to the house; questions to which she had no answer.

“Maybe you could come over that day?” she asked, ducking her head with a blush. “I-I don’t know what I’m doing, obviously, but I need to learn.”

Christine wondered if he had slivered the tiny almond shards himself, plating them each some of the greens he’d set on the table, basking in the easy domesticity they seemed to share together, as he readily agreed to assist her with her home repairs.

She had been about to to tell him about contacting the symphony and the opera company, but the sight of the stuffed lobster tails he placed before her made her words trail off. 

“Oh...oh my goodness! Erik, you didn’t need to go through all this trouble!”

“I  _ am _ groveling,” he reminded her with another light shrug, placing the tray with her mac and cheese on the table before carefully peeling back the foil. 

Christine wasn’t sure what it was he’d been expecting, but clearly the bright orange goo was not it. She watched as his eyes widened comically, the corner of his lip twitching. Christine suspected he was biting his tongue to keep from laughing outright.

She was not as strong willed, and doubled over giggling at the look on his masked face, desperately wishing she could see his expression unencumbered.

“Lobster mac and cheese...it’s almost like we planned it,” she wheezed. “See? Perfectly compatible.”

.

.

“So what have you been up to all week? You said you just started a new work project, right?”

She wasn’t sure why she was building him an excuse, giving him the out, but she didn’t want to think about the very real possibility that he’d been intentionally ignoring her. 

Erik was at the sink, rinsing plates before he placed them in the dishwasher. Christine had noticed, when she was here on Christmas Eve, the small smart device tucked in the corner of the kitchen counter. Leaving the table, she moved beside him at the counter, rolling up her sleeves, and gave him what she hoped was her winningest smile before shutting the empty dishwasher door.

“Hey Google, play showtunes,” she called out in a clear voice.  _ Oh what a beautiful mornin _ filled the air a moment later, and Erik smiled back. “You wash, I’ll dry,” she murmured, leaning up on her toes to kiss his masked cheek before she could think better of it. Sinking with a blush, she let her voice join with music, ringing out across his kitchen. 

They’d already played their alternating questions game as they ate, after she’d announced that she’d eaten in many high end restaurants and fancy hotels, but wasn’t sure she’d ever been served something as fancy and delicious as the meal Erik had made for her. It had prompted him to ask how it was she’d had so much experience in fine dining, leading her to talk about Raoul’s family.

“They never liked me, not really. I was able to dress up and look the part, but I wasn’t from their world.”

She’d learned that Erik had been on his own since he was nineteen when his mother died after he’d gone off to school. “It was inevitable,” he shrugged. “I had always taken care of her. She was a low-functioning alcoholic on a good day, and good days were infrequent.”

“I’m so sorry,” Christine murmured, finding his hand across the table as she’d done on Christmas. “That had to have been hard. You dad’s not in the picture?”

“No, not since I was young, I barely remember him, really. Just a lot of yelling.” 

Erik’s thumb moved gently over her knuckles as he spoke, and Christine squirmed in her seat. She simultaneously wanted to pull him into her arms to comfort him and crawl across the table and climb onto his lap to kiss him.

“It was hard, but it was also a relief, you know? I was the adult in the house from the time I was about seven, so...I felt guilty, but I was free.”

His thumb continued to move in soft circles against her skin and Christine felt a flush creep to her cheeks. His touch was so incredibly soft, and she wondered if he was able to feel her racing heartbeat.  She moved her own fingers lightly against the edge of his wrist and was gratified at his slight shiver. The conversation moved to safer waters and the moment passed, but her skin still tingled from his touch, almost an hour later.

Washing dishes and singing for him turned out to be a perfect after-dinner activity, giving her the chance to touch him lightly as they stood side-by-side, at least until she’d forced awkwardness back between them. It was during a song from Brigadoon that she asked him about his week. 

“I did just start a new project,” he agreed quietly. 

When he said nothing more, Christine felt the butterflies sink to the bottom of her stomach, their wings gummed over by her own idiocy. He  _ had _ been avoiding her. They were finished with the dishes by then, and there was nothing left to distract from the gaping hole silence had created in the kitchen. _ I didn’t think she was joining us tonight, _ Christine thought as the bright, spacious room seem to shrink around her.

“...but I didn't get anything done.” His laugh was sardonic and grim. “I'm so ridiculously behind. We had a presentation meeting for the early stages this week and I had literally nothing to bring. ‘This will be a building. It will be tall. There will be windows’. It was easily one of the top five worst moments of my career and that includes almost burning to death.”

She laughed hesitantly, watching him shift, refusing to meet her eye. “I’ll be honest, that shocks me. You struck me as an anal retentive perfectionist.”

“I  _ am _ an anal retentive perfectionist!” he insisted as he turned towards her, making her laugh again, the butterflies slowly shaking themselves free of the muck. His dark, self-deprecating chuckle joined hers. “I never do shit like this, I’m never unprepared. Nadir was furious with me.”

“I saw his car,” Christine laughed, wiping the corner of her eye. “Did he come over to read you the riot act?”

Erik's neck flushed at her words. “You could say that.”

“Hmm. Well then what  _ did _ you do all week if you weren't working?”

Erik turned to face her then, leaning his back against the counter. “Chain smoked a lot, I guess? Sat outside shivering? I was very distracted.”

Something in his eyes made her breath catch and Christine felt her laughter die in her throat. His beautiful starburst eyes were alight with desperation and something that may have been panic; panic that did not dissipate as she stepped closer. “Distracted?”

“Mmhm. There was a siren.” He’d turned his gaze away from hers then, staring across the big room to where the fire flickered and popped. “She was calling to me every day, singing so beautifully. Every time I tried to get any work done, I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. Only her.”

Christine couldn’t breathe, she realized. The butterflies had grown so numerous, so frantic that their beating wings took up every inch of her, preventing basic lung inflation.

“Why didn’t you go find her?” she asked in a quivering voice. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to scream or cry, kiss him or slap him. All week she’d sung, songs she loved, songs to heal her heart, to fix herself and push away thoughts of him and the feeling of his arms around her, and he’d been listening. 

Listening, and had still not come to her.

“Because I’m terrible at this. Because I’m  _ this _ ,” Erik’s voice broke off on a hiss before another hard swallow, “and she’s so beautiful.”

Much like the laughter that was always hovering nearby, Christine couldn’t remember ever being such a crier. She supposed her year, her grief, her decision to start moving forward could be used as excuses, but she didn’t exactly know why her emotions felt so raw and exposed when she was with him.

The tears that were streaming down her cheeks didn’t seem to matter, in any case, as when she leaned up to press her mouth to his, he was ready for her.  _ This _ time he was ready, and met her lips with a desperation that matched her own. She felt his arm come around her, felt his hand in her hair, felt his breath catch against her lips as he pulled away. 

The moment was broken by the distant, tinny sound of her ringing phone.

  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter 8

The moment was broken by the distant, tinny sound of her ringing phone.

At the unexpected noise, Erik abruptly released her, his arms falling to his sides like a naughty child who’d been caught playing with something they’d been told not to. She felt a slight slump beneath the hand she had on his shoulder, the tightness of his posture against her. Christine caught the brief flash of disappointment in his eyes before they dropped to the floor.

“Your coat is down the hall,” he said to the ground, not meeting her eye. “You should go answer that. It was ringing before, while we were eating, it...it’s probably something important.”

Christine instantly remembered the way she’d felt the day he’d caught her on the ice, when his phone had gone off as he held her tightly. She’d been certain it was something more important than her; it didn’t matter that rationally she knew it was probably a just work call. Her loneliness and depression had overwhelmed her in that moment. She’d reacted with gasping emotion and had run away, had seen his puzzled expression staring after her.

“It’s not,” she said firmly. “There’s nothing more important than what I’m doing right--” 

Her words were cut off by the phone yet again, and she huffed in annoyance. “I’m going to go answer that so that I can tell whoever it is to leave me alone...and you’re going to find us a nice bottle of that Sauternes I like, okay?”

She smiled at his small nod. His eyes had raised to her mouth, at least, she noted. Stretching up on her toes once more, she met his lips in a soft kiss before dropping back to the floor. “I’ll be right back.”

Christine grumbled to herself as she stomped down the dark hallway where her coat was hung on the rack in the foyer, wiping away the remnants of tears on her cheeks. She reached the phone just before it stopped ringing again, jabbing at the screen with unnecessary force.

“Christine! Ohmigod where ARE you?!” 

Meg’s voice, high pitched and slightly slurred, shrieked in her ear.

“You need to get dressed right now and come to this party! There’s a guy here and he’s super hot, Chris! He’s single, he’s in finance, and I told him all about you. Don’t worry, he’s not a jerk, I told him if he was I’d kick his teeth in. Put on something sexy and get down here! Take an Uber!”

Her friend’s drunken exclamations finally paused and Christine closed her eyes, trying her best not to be irritated.  _ Hot guy, in finance _ . The fact that she was describing Raoul was apparently lost on Meg, in her current state.

“Meg, I already told you I wasn’t coming to that party. Put your phone away and go have fun, it sounds like a blast. You can tell me all about it this week, okay?”

“Christine, noooo!!!” 

Meg was, Christine knew, melodramatic at the best of times. Once she had several drinks under belt, she was positively operatic.

“I don’t want you to sit home being sad all night! Just put on your cute underwear and come down here, please! This guy is  _ so _ hot! I’m trying to get you laid!”

“So am I, and it’s not going to happen if you don’t leave me alone!” she cried in exasperation. Christine sucked a breath through her teeth, closing her eyes. “I love you. I know you’re just thinking of me, and I appreciate it, and I’m sorry for doing this, but I have to go. I’ll tell you all about it this week, okay? Happy New Year!”

Ending the call before Meg could say anything else, she promptly swiped her screen to her settings, and placed the phone on airplane mode.

_ There. Done.  _

She couldn’t be mad at her friend; she knew Meg really was just trying to look out for her, but the repeated exhaultions of  _ he’s so hot! _ \--as if that what was the most important thing she should be looking for--curdled her stomach a bit. Slipping the phone into her pocket, Christine wondered, not for the first time, what Meg would think of Erik. 

He was tall and slim and strong, she argued with the invisible adversary in her head. She’d felt the wiry strength in his arms the day he’d caught her, had held her so gently in those same arms on Christmas. She’d spent the entire winter lusting after him, she already knew that she didn’t mind the scars on his body...far more important was that he was sweet and smart and thoughtful. She liked that he was sharp and sarcastic. He made her laugh, made butterflies live and dance within her. 

_ His face doesn’t matter _ .

Christine wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince anymore: herself, or that other voice in her head.

Before turning away, she gave the coat rack another long look. The sight of her light purple puffer--something she’d purchased on whim to cheer herself up, as she’d liked the color--on the rack next to his dark grey crombie made her smile. The classic wool coat was sensible and professional and completely at odds with her more whimsical one, but they complimented each other perfectly and looked at home resting side-by-side.

Putting the momentary distraction behind her, Christine returned to the kitchen with a smile. She’d make him play for her, she thought. He was supposed to be groveling, after all.

The smile died on her lips, all further thoughts of making him grovel gone when she entered the kitchen. Erik stood at the counter, leaning on the edge with whitened knuckles. His shoulders were tense, his head bowed, and he trembled slightly. Christine was reminded of that very first disastrous night, when she’d spied on him for the first time from her little hall window, slumped over his countertop, a picture of misery.

Somewhere inside, that pessimistic little voice was hissing that he didn't want her there, clearly, but Christine ignored it easily. Her own insecurities mattered little in that moment, and all she wanted to do was reassure him. 

Before she could question the wiseness of her actions, she’d moved to where he stood. Wrapping her arms around his slim waist, she hugged him tightly, resting her cheek against his back. He immediately tensed in her arms, but she was expecting it, and didn't let go. After a moment, she felt Erik’s long fingered hand cover her own where it rested just above his belt, and her breath caught, anticipating him to gently remove it. Instead, after a flicker of hesitation, his fingers threaded with her own. Her breath released on a sigh, pressing into him, shivering as his thumb gently caressed her palm.

Time stopped as Christine leaned into the long, solid line of him. She didn't know what was going through his head, what he was panicking over, but she was well enough acquainted with the sucking abyss of her own depression and loneliness to understand that the why didn’t matter, not really. They stood there quietly for several endless heartbeats, until Erik raised her hand to his mouth, brushing his lips lightly over her knuckles.

“Why don’t you try the Sauternes,” he said in a quiet, rough voice, releasing her hand. The wine he’d already poured them was back on the table, and she knew it was once again her turn to infer his meaning. 

_ Please just give a me a minute _

“Okay,” she murmured, leaning up on her toes again until she was able to kiss the back of his neck before she turned away. He froze under her touch, his shoulders raising slightly, and Christine was tempted to press her face against him once more, until he stopped flinching at every contact.

_ Too fast _ , she thought, forcing herself to move away from him. It was all too fast for him, probably, too intimate, but it didn’t feel that way to her. She already felt as if she’d known him for years.

Following his example from the previous week, she carried their glasses to the sofa in front of the fire.  _ Returning to the scene of the crime, _ she thought grimly, sipping at her wine. The overhead light went out, plunging the room into darkness, and Christine jumped. Turning slightly, she could see the small light above the sink, the same one she’d seen on all this past week, was lit.

Erik crossed the room slowly, and without needing to turn around Christine felt his presence looming behind her. Patting the sofa next to her, she glanced over he shoulder with a small smile. “I left room for you, you know,” she called out. 

His silhouette in the light of the blazing fire stilled her breath, and it was another long, tense moment before he moved around the sofa to join her.

He’d removed the mask.

His injury wasn’t any worse than it had been the previous week, was exactly as she remembered from the endless nights of watching him from her window. The stomach turning revulsion she might have felt at one time over the misshapen features, the waxy red skin, broken up in patches of scaly, puckered texture was long past. The melted stump of a nose, the pulled eyelid...it was simply his face, Erik’s face.

It was the face of the man with whom she thought she could fall in love, Christine considered, as he slowly lowered himself to the cushion beside her. 

He stared straight ahead, once more avoiding her eye, his posture stiff and unyielding. The hands clenched on his knees were bone-white, tendons raised in tension and strain.

Erik’s breathing was labored at best, coming out erratically fast, punctuated by moments when she thought he might not have been breathing at all.

_ I’m not as brave as you _

He’d been honest about it, she thought.  _ He can’t do this on his own...you need show him it doesn't matter _ .

Tucking her legs to her side, she lifted his arm determindley, scraping his fingers from their deathgrip on his kneecap. She remembered not to be offended when he tensed and tightened beneath her touch, and draped his long arm over her shoulder, leaning against his chest.  _ You can do this _ , she assured herself. 

Christine sighed happily, melting into him when she felt his hand land hesitantly on her back a few moments later. It wasn’t long before he’d settled into rubbing a pattern of soothing circles against her, as he’d done on Christmas. It was a long while before either of them spoke.

“Did you tell your friend that you had dinner with the pretty cat thief from next door?”

“Yes,” he responded in a stiff, clipped voice.

She smiled against him, gliding her fingertips over his side. His stomach bunched at her touch, but Christine continued, undeterred. “And did you tell him that you kissed her and then avoided her all week?”

Silence had taken a seat by the fire, arranging herself languidly in the armchair. The logs crackled and hissed as Christine waited.

“I think it may have come up,” Erik gritted out. “He wanted to know what the hell I’d been doing all week, and didn’t believe me when I said I’d been binge-watching things on Netflix. Apparently admitting to sitting outside and listening to the neighbor sing only opened the door to more questions.”

Christine laughed, trying to envision the copper skinned man pacing in front of the huge stone hearth as Erik admitted to not getting any work done because of her. “Did he tell you you’re an idiot?”

“Oh yes, that he did. In several languages, although his vocabulary was a bit more colorful.”

Her laughter at his admission bounced up around the beamed ceiling, pushing silence back into her seat

“Oh! I forgot to tell you before...I sent an inquiry to the symphony about singing with the chorus...I have an open invitation to drop by to audition,” Christine murmured with a smile, feeling his arm tighten around her briefly. “I reached out to the opera too, hopefully I’ll hear back from them after the holidays. It would just be for the chorus, but still…”

“I’m glad,” he murmured softly. “Your voice is too beautiful to not be heard.”

She turned her face into his chest, breathing him in; warm and spicy, so much better than the silly candle. The hand at her back drifted upwards, slipping into her hair as he continued in a low voice that sent the butterflies into hysteria.

“What made you change your mind, I wonder?”

Long fingers threaded into her curls until they grazed her scalp, and she shivered. Tipping her head back into his hand, Christine looked up to him with a smile. As soon as their eyes met in the fire’s glow, his face snapped away, throat bobbing.  _ He’s not going to make this easy, he’s a big dummy. Just kiss him!  _

“Well, there’s this guy I really like, see.” As she spoke, Christine trailed her fingers over the edge of his collar, feeling him tremble beneath her. “He really likes my voice and told me I should be singing somewhere. I value his opinion, and I had a whoooole long week to think about it...I guess I decided he was right.”

The arm around her tightened convulsively as she spoke, slackening as she trailed off. 

“Hmph. He sounds very smart.” 

That laugh, the stranger’s laugh she’d reclaimed as her own, sounded across the room, and the fingers at his collar hesitantly climbed to his throat. _ He was ridiculous _ . “He’s book smart, but he’s actually sort of a dummy.”

“Oh?” The corner of Erik’s thin lips twitched, although he still wouldn’t meet her eye. 

“Yeah, but I still like him. Plus I found out today that we’ll be emotionally compatible and have really great sex, so…”

Bibi appeared at the sound of Erik’s rich laughter, ringing through the giant room. The little cat curiously stalked around the sofa, twisting her head this way and that at what was apparently a foreign sound. Christine wondered how often he actually laughed, how often anyone would laugh if there was never anyone around with which to do so. The deep sound reverberated through her, melodious and golden, like ambered honey, and she couldn't help but think that his voice complimented hers as though they were a matched set.

“You can't believe everything you read in books, you know.” His voice was softer as his laughter trailed off, softer and wistful. “Maybe you shouldn’t bother. You’re far too lovely to be dealing with imbeciles.” He traced patterns at the back of her neck with a feather-light touch as he spoke, sending a ripple down her spine that settled between her pressed-together thighs. “You’re beautiful and talented...he doesn’t sound worth the effort.”

“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, neighbor of mine,” she murmured, shifting to pull one of her knees beneath her for leverage to raise herself. “I’m positive he  _ is _ worth the effort.”

His hand tightened in her hair when their lips met, controlling the kiss for the first time. She remembered thinking that this was a dance he’d known once, and since their dalliance on Christmas he’d apparently remembered the steps. Heat and pressure, his teeth nipping her full flower lip before  his tongue moved to soothe it in a gentle swipe. Christine’s hand scrabbled for purchase at his front, gripping a handful of his midnight blue button-down before it sought higher, curling around his neck.

It wasn’t until her palm cupped his face that he pulled away. The were both gasping as she rested her forehead against his, wishing she had enough leverage in her position to straddle his lap. She wanted to feel the long, hard line of his body against her, his heat and his arousal, wanted him to feel how she was trembling with desire and excitement, the butterflies positively vibrating within her.

Instead, he flinched beneath her palm, pulling back and turning his head.

Instantly, the fluttering wings deflated, and she sank back down to her original position at his side. Christine dropped again against his chest, and to her relief, he didn’t prevent her from doing so.

“I’ve already seen it, you know,” she said quietly, toying with the collar of his shirt once more. She liked the dark blue, she decided, as his broad palm settled over her hip. It brought out the flecks of color in his eyes, and gave the impression that she was sinking into the midnight sky as she rested against him.

_ Sure on this shining night, of star-made shadows round _

“I remember,” he said woodenly. It took her several seconds to discern what he was referring to. At once, an image of herself--sprawled in the grass, cowering in fear as he stood above her-- crystalized in her mind. Christine jerked as if she’d been doused in a bucket of icy water.

“No! Not...not that! That’s not what I--”

“It’s fine. That night wasn’t your fault.”

She sat up, shrugging out from under his arm and pulled back to look at him. The unprotesting way he let his arm drop from her, the way he still sat expressionlessly facing the flames, his quiet, toneless voice... _ he’s so damned resigned _ , she thought, her heart twisting.

“That’s not what I’m talking about! And that night was too my fault! Erik, I was trying to steal your cat.”

He glowered at her from the corner of his eye, and she smiled, glad for any reaction from him at that point. “Fine.  _ That _ part was your fault.”

“It was  _ all _ my fault,” she insisted regretfully, “and I’m sorry. You have to believe me, I didn’t mean to--”

“Stop,” he cut her off, raising a hand when she began to protest. “It wasn’t your fault for reacting the way you did, you couldn’t have been expecting something so horri--”

Christine pressed herself against him once more, cutting off his words and forcing her arms around his slim waist. “Stop it! Why are you so stubborn and stupid?” she asked into his shirt. “That’s not even what I was talking about. I’ve seen you lots of times.” 

Erik said nothing, but beneath her cheek she felt his breath hitch. “From my upstairs window,” she went on quietly. “I can see down into your kitchen. You don’t wear your mask at home and I-I’ve seen you lots of times.” She trailed off as she repeated herself, her face flaming.

Silence had seated herself near the fire once more, and sipped her wine with a knowing smile.

“You...spied on me?” His brow furrowed as he looked down on her with narrowed eyes. “Why?”

She buried her face into his shirt, her turn to be the one unwilling to make eye contact. “You always looked so calm and relaxed,” she murmured. “I like watching you make dinner. You cooked like a grownup.” 

He snorted and Christine looked up hopefully. He didn’t seem angry, just puzzled. “I  _ am _ a grownup, Christine.” he pointed out archly. “We both are.”

_ No games, no more pretending. _

“Well, I’m not a good one.” She pressed her cheek back to his chest and tightened her grip around him. “My life is a disaster. I’m a mess. You’re not, and it was nice to watch. I liked watching you every day.”

To her surprise, Eriks arm came around her once more, his fingers again sliding into her hair. “You’re not a mess,” he said in a low soothing voice. “You’ve had a hell of a year and you’re just resetting.” 

He bent his head to brush his lips over her temple, and she melted a bit further. She wondered if that was their fate, to endlessly take turns comforting each other. It didn’t seem like such a bad thing, she thought.

Christine considered her earlier impulse. She ought get up right now and lock  _ his _ door. She lived here now, with him and his cat, and what she was hoping was a king-sized bed somewhere upstairs. 

_ May as well cop to it all. _

“I liked seeing you in your work suits,” she went on, “I  _ especially _ liked seeing you in your pajamas--” He tensed beneath her as she went on, “--you don’t wear a shirt, you know.” Her hand hesitated for only a moment before she unfastened his top button, allowing her to stroke the tender skin of his throat. Her fingertips learned the red, uneven texture of his burns, ghosting over his bobbing adam’s apple before gently circling the hollow of his throat.

She undid a second button.

“So you see, I’ve already seen all of this.” Another button and then she was able press her lips against his warm skin.

Christine shifted quickly---before she lost her nerve, before he had the presence of mind to stop her---using the knee she’d pulled under herself for leverage to straddle his legs. They were nose to nose now, there was nowhere he could turn away to hide his melted, misshapen face from her. Erik sucked in a shocked, panicked breath as she turned, her fingers immediately relanding on his shirt, nimbly unfastening the rest of the buttons.

The dark blue fabric parted, revealing his taut, sinewy form. From the countless days and nights of watching him, she knew just where his ivory skin was interrupted by an uneven tidal wave of scars that crested over his shoulder and down his left arm. She’d wondered for months what his burns would feel like beneath her lips, and now, as she peppered his chest with tiny kisses, she knew.

Raised, almost scaly feeling in some spots, waxy smooth in others, she learned, as her lips moved over his sternum, up to his sharp clavicle. His breath came out sharp and shuddering as she kissed up his neck to his ruined cheek, her thumb circling over the uninjured nipple on his right side.

_ All is healed _

“I’ve already seen all this,” she repeated, “and it doesn’t bother me.”

_ All is health _

Her hands landed on his belt, fingertips drifting to caress over the firmness that had grown between them, when long fingers closed on her wrist, stopping her movement.

“Christine,” he gritted out, his lovely eyes squeezed shut as if he were in excruciating pain. “It’s been a  _ very _ long time…”

She understood his meaning at once, and moved her hands back safer ground, to graze over his bare chest. Leaning forward to kiss his face once more, she hovered her lips at the shell of his partially melted ear.

“It’s a good thing I planned on staying for breakfast then, right?” she whispered, pulling back to see his expression, unsure if she had overstepped his want.

Erik’s eyes snapped open, freezing her in their multicolored depths. He said nothing for several long, fraught moments, his lovely eyes moving rapidly over her, searching for some sign of revulsion. When there was none, he exhaled roughly, his pupils blown wide. Christine barely had time to take a breath before his lips crashed into hers, hand once again in her hair, directing the angle and pressure of the kiss.

“That’s fair,” he rasped as their mouths broke apart. “I guess this makes us even.”

Christine’s head lolled forward, unable to form coherent thought. The room was spinning, and she was dizzy with desire. “Wha-what do you mean? What are you talking about?”

Her back arched abruptly, surprised at the feel of his cool hands suddenly under her sweater, drawing the soft material up her body and over her head.  _ Good news _ , she thought to herself as he lowered his head to ghost his lips over the swell of her cleavage.  _ You’re not going to need to tie him to the chair.  _

“It’s alright,” Erik mimicked her soft, simpering tone. “I’ve already seen them, you know.”

“What--what are you--” her voice cut off again as his tongue moved over the nipple he’d drawn out of her lacy bra, just before his mouth closed over it. Christine was surprised there was still room for them there on the sofa, was shocked there was room for anything else in the room, so numerous and frantic were the butterflies that poured out of her as she whimpered in need.

_ Free _ , she thought. They were free and so was she.

_ All is healed _

_ All is health _

“If you don’t want the man next door,” he panted, releasing her nipple with a pop, “to have absolutely filthy dreams about you--” the hand at her back released her bra clasp, and Christine helped him along by letting the silky black straps fall down her arms. 

“--then you really shouldn't stand in front of your window naked, lovely girl.”


	9. Chapter 9

"You have," Meg exclaimed as Christine shook the snow from her hair, " _SO_  much freaking explaining to do, young lady!"

Christine seated herself at the kitchen table as her friend held a champagne flute hostage, just out of her reach. She scowled up at Meg, who returned the look with a glare of her own, a near replica of her mother's imperious hundred yard stare. Christine was about to point out the similarity when the the lady in question hobbled into the room, as gracefully as she could manage less than two weeks after her hip surgery.

"Christine, sweetpea, I thought I heard your voice. For heaven's sake Meg, what are you doing with that mimosa?"

" _Sweetpea_  was just about to explain why she refused to come out on New Year's Eve and have fun with her friend,  _and_  why she hung up on her,  _and_  why she refused to answer her phone for an entire day."

Christine flushed at Meg's words. It was true, her phone  _had_  been off on New Year's Day, because it was dead in her coat pocket. She hadn't missed it all morning, being otherwise occupied with far more pleasurable activities. By the time she'd remembered the phone at all, it was mid afternoon and the battery was drained.

It had been plugged into the charger on Erik's bedside table when Meg called next, and by the time she checked it, hours later, there had indeed been several missed calls. She knew it was inevitable that Meg would be irritated with her avoidance, but at one point when the phone had been ringing, her dream of being taken on hands and knees by the man next door was being made a panting, moaning reality, his teeth scraping roughly over her shoulder as she gripped a pillow for leverage.

She could face Meg's wrath.

"A better question would be why Marguerite was drunk dialing me on New Year's Eve when she was supposed to be having fun with her fiance," Christine rebounded with a spiteful smile.  _There you go...twist it back._

"I was calling because I was trying to find you true love, and you hung up on me!"

"I hung up because you were slurring!"

" _Enough_!"

The girls fell silent at Mrs. Giry's commanding, aggravated voice.

"Marguerite Elizabeth, do we need to have a conversation about ladylike consumption?"

Meg snorted in response to her mother and tipped back her own mimosa. "I seem to remember you getting mighty sloppy at that limbo contest on the cruise ship, Mother."

She stuck her tongue out at Christine, who grinned back widely. The girls had been bickering like sisters for as long as they'd been friends, they weren't likely to stop just because they were now in their thirties.

"That was  _vacation_ , Meg," her mother said peevishly, and Christine dissolved into laughter.

"What happens in Riviera Maya stays in Riviera Maya, Meg," she wheezed through her laughter. She'd gone on the cruise in question with mother and daughter, and Mrs. Giry had indeed enjoyed the rum drinks on the ship a bit too well.

"Fine, I shouldn't have called Christine drunk, even though I was only concerned with her long term happiness. I'm  _sorry_." Meg curtseyed dramatically, handing Christine a champagne flute at last.

"Now...Christine dear, have you seen the final menu yet?"

"No, nuh uh. Wedding talk can wait. I want to know why Sweetpea couldn't answer her phone all day, and why she hung up on me on New Year's Eve."

Christine felt her face heat as Meg went on. "I really think you'll like this guy we met at the party, Chris. You need to start getting out there again."

"It wouldn't hurt to start making some friends, dear," Mrs. Giry added gently, her raised eyebrow telling Christine exactly what type of  _friends_  she meant. "It's been a full year after all."

The kitchen in Meg's condo was small, could have fit three times in Erik's spacious, open one, but Christine had always been comfortable there. The little yellow and white plant stand, the copper pot rack above the stove...Christine knew every nook and cranny of this room, with as many afternoons as she'd spent here with her friend.

The kitchen had turned on her in that moment, the light green walls closing in until she felt pressed from all sides. Blood pounded in her ears and it took her a moment to realize Meg was still talking.

"...and I don't think that's such a big step. Just have drinks with him, and if you like him and it goes well, you guys can meet Will and I for dinner somewhere. If you hate him, well at least you took the first step. We've got to get you back out there, girl. Take off those granny panties and dust out the cobwebs."

Mrs. Giry glared at her daughter, and Christine felt her face turn purple.

She'd woken up in her own bed the morning after New Year's Day feeling like she'd been hit by a truck. When she'd bent in the shower that morning to retrieve her loofah, she'd gasped at the tug she'd felt, a delicious pull of soreness within her that reminded her of all she'd done with Erik.

She thought it was safe to say the cobwebs had been thoroughly cleared.

"No. I don't want to go out with some rando."

"He's not some rando! He's a guy  _I_  met and personally vetted for you! If you would have just come out on New Year's Eve instead of sitting at home moping then you could-"

"I was on a date," she blurted defensively. She watched twin sets of Giry eyebrows hover several feet in the air, mouths agape at her. "That's why I didn't come out with you. I was having dinner with a guy I actually like, so while I appreciate you looking out for me, I don't want to go out with some random finance bro who sounds exactly like my ex-husband."

Christine snapped the last out with a bit more bite than she'd intended, although Meg had the grace to look abashed at the accusation.

"Oh my freaking God, how could you not tell me?! When did you meet him, who is h-"

Meg cut herself off, dark eyes narrowing dangerously. " _Wait_ , is this the guy you had dinner with on Christmas? The neighbor?"

Christine took a steadying breath and drew herself up. She could do this. She just needed to channel the old Christine, the one who could hold her own in department meetings, who could always squeeze out more funding for her kids through calm, measured discussion.

"Yes, him. And I really like him, so I'm not interested in going out with finance bro."

"Christmas?" Mrs. Giry asked, eyebrow still raised.

"But I thought you said-"

"I was wrong," she continued steadily, cutting Meg off. "He had to go out of town for work, that's why I didn't talk to him."

It wasn't a lie, not really, she reminded herself. Erik  _had_  left on an overnight trip, and she knew now that it  _had_  been for work. She smiled, thinking of the way he had described how unprepared he'd been for the disastrous meeting.

_This will be a building. It will be tall. There will be windows._

She snorted at the memory of his words, and at the thought of Nasir furiously standing in open-mouthed incredulity at his partner's poor presentation.

Christine realized with a blush she'd stopping talking, preoccupying herself with thoughts of Erik. Mrs. Giry cleared her throat with a smile and pushed back from the table.

"Let me get the menu folder. We only have another few days to make changes, so we need your input, Sweetpea."

As soon as her mother had carefully made her way out of the room, Meg rounded on Christine. "Did you sleep with him? Is that why you hung up on me? Hurry before mom comes back!"

" _Yes_!" she hissed, blushing furiously. "Yes, okay? I didn't think I needed your permission to have sex, sheesh!"

Meg threw her hands up dramatically, stomping to the table from where she'd been leaning at the sink. "You didn't need permission, but how could you not call your best friend in the whole world to celebrate?! You knew we weren't having dinner with mom until late afternoon on New Year's Day, why didn't you call me as soon you got home?!"

Christine wondered if anyone had ever died from excessive blushing. She knew the physiological cause, and wondered if there were any documented cases of blood vessels expanding so widely and so frequently that they just exploded.

"Oh my  _fucking_  God, Christine!" Meg dropped to a chair as she buried her face in her hands. "I can't believe you!"

.

.

She hadn't gone back to her own house on New Year's Day until well after eleven o'clock at night. They'd been lying on his big sectional sofa in front of the fireplace, the red chenille blanket tucked around them, when she'd heard the chimes coming from the stately grandfather clock in the foyer. She'd been watching Roman Holiday on the big flatscreen she'd joyously discovered tucked inside a panel on the wall, with Erik's arm wrapped around her.

The steady rise and fall of his chest at her back told her he'd fallen asleep, and for a while Christine just enjoyed laying there cuddled with him. She'd been drowsy and happy, and felt amazingly at home.

At the sound of the chimes, she'd realized she'd been in his house for more than twenty four hours, and considered that she probably needed to go home. She'd unwittingly done enough to disrupt his work schedule in the past week, and knew he would need to settle back into his routine the following day.

Erik stirred as she slipped from his arms, startling awake as she drew the blanket over his shoulders. His brow was furrowed and his eyes squinted in the firelight, but Christine was still able to discern a flicker of uncertainty there. She quickly leaned forward to brush her lips against his softly, reassuringly.

"Shhh, I'm going to go home, it's pretty late...go back to sleep."

He'd nodded and moved to sit up. "Alright, let me get your coat."

She pushed back on his shoulders, attempting to keep him on the sofa. "No, you don't need to do that. Seriously, go back to sleep, you need to get back to work tomorrow. We can't both be unemployed. I'm just going next door, it's fine."

Erik had slipped his own hands under hers and pushed back lightly as he sat up, kissing her nose as he did so. "It's adorable that you think I'm going to let you walk home by yourself in the dark."

She'd grumbled about his stubbornness, but was glad he'd insisted on it when he'd kissed her goodnight on her porch a few minutes later, deep and lingering. She'd been tempted to pull him inside with her.  _Pull him in and lock the door_!

"Don't forget, we have a date on Wednesday," she'd reminded him as they parted, before shutting the door and turning the lock.

.

.

"I called you Monday morning," she mumbled to Meg. "I got home really late on Sunday, it was too late to call then."

Meg's dark eyes glimmered like obsidian in her narrow face as she glowered at Christine.

"So let me get this straight...you had plans with him for New Year's Eve, which you didn't tell me about."

Christine tried to interject that their plans had been last minute, but Meg continued doggedly, not letting her speak.

"You then proceeded to spend the next twenty four hours having marathon sex with the same man you told me two days earlier had ghosted you, the first person you've had sex with since undergrad whose name isn't Raoul, might I add, and the first time you've had sex in the past freaking year...and you thought there was  _any_  point in the night that was too late to call me?!"

To Christine's everlasting relief, Meg's mother reentered the kitchen at that moment, tabling any and all further discussion of her sex life. She was loathe to admit that Meg's description of her holiday spent with Erik wasn't too far off the mark.

It hadn't started that way, not quite.

.

.

Erik's wide, long-fingered hand cupped the weight of her breast, the pad of his calloused thumb circling her pebbled nipple as his lips and tongue circled and sucked on the other.

His other hand splayed upon her back, occasionally moving up to tighten in the hair at the nape of her neck before dragging his fingertips down her spine. She shuddered every time he did so, her entire body vibrating with desire.

Now that the butterflies had freed themselves, Christine was no longer a prisoner of their temperamental movements, free at last to shift and move and feel on her own.

She felt, and she wanted  _more_.

Her hands moved to his belt, managed to undo the buckle, her nails dragging over the thick bulge there as she pulled down his zipper, when the hand that had been at her breast locked on her wrist, stilling her movement.

Her next attempt yielded the button, before he stopped her once more..

"Erik," she panted in aggravation. "This is a give and take operation, you know."

He didn't attempt to stop her again, but retaliated by sliding his hands up her legs, pausing with a quiver when he discovered her bare skin, her thick grey socks ending just over her knees. His lips sought hers in another bruising kiss, and Christine felt her ears heat, knowing that the dexterous fingers that were now caressing the front of her mesh panties could undoubtedly feel the growing dampness there.

The room seemed to be buzzing around her, seemed to be spinning wildly, and she gasped in a breath to steady herself. She had him in hand at last, velvet encased steel, pulsing, alive and warm. Her thumb spread a bead of moisture from the tip in steady circles, dragging the tight ring of her fingers down his length. When he moaned against her lips, Christine sucked it in, swallowing it down, feeling it reverberate through her.

"Stop, stop please," he gasped, his hand closing around hers once more. It tightened there briefly before tugging hers away, long fingers threading with her own.

Christine experienced a heart-topping moment of panic that she was misreading all of his cues.

"D-do you not want to…" She trailed off, feeling her face heat in mortification.

"No! I  _do_ , I just…"

It was his turn to trail off in frustration, his ears and neck flaming scarlet. Christine felt the tightness in his shoulders, the tension through his lean frame. Erik was holding himself like a taut, wiry band, ready to snap, and she realized he couldn't possibly be enjoying himself. He was too worried about finishing early,  _which he absolutely is going to do_ , she thought, and would likely be too upset afterwards to continue.

_We just need to take that off the table._

Tugging her hand from his, Christine cupped his face and leaned into him, meeting his lips. The kiss was deep and languid; they parted, sighed, and met again. His cool touch, warmed from the fire, dragged down her back to cup her backside under her skirt and she wiggled against his palms.

Erik's head dropped back as she kissed her way slowly down his neck and over his chest, her lips memorizing the texture of his burns and tasting the salt of his skin. When she'd reached as far as she able, Christine quickly slid her legs back, sliding down his body like an eel until her knees met the floor. She smirked in triumph, the pearling head of his manhood in her mouth before he had a chance to stop her.

Electricity thrummed in her veins. Christine very nearly didn't recognize herself; she was  _not_  good at talking to men, she never had been. Anytime a man had ever flirted with her, she instantly start looking for a way to end the conversation, rather than prolonging it. She often thought that if she and Raoul hadn't been childhood friends first, she never would have been able to have a real conversation with him later. Marriage had been a godsend, keeping awkward conversations at bay.

Somehow though, with  _this_  man she was a brazen seductress, doing things the old Christine would never had dreamed of.  _He's bad at this too_ , she reminded herself, remembering his words in the kitchen, when he'd called her beautiful.  _One of us needs to be brave._

The absence of the butterflies had left a cavernous hole in her chest, a hole that was currently filled with a pulsing euphoria. She liked this man. She wanted to have a relationship with this man. Right now though, more than anything else, with a potential end to her year-long drought in sight, she wanted to have sex with this man.

_Repeatedly._

His hands had found their way into her hair once more, initially attempted to tug her away, although as her lips tightened and her head bobbed, the hands flattened out, fingers gripping fistfuls of her curls convulsively. It wasn't long before she was swallowing down the salty bursts of his release, gratified at the groan of satisfaction she heard above her. Christine stayed where she was on the floor until his softened member slipped from her mouth.

She'd been fixated on that dark trail of hair for weeks, had wanted to follow it with her lips and discover the treasure at the trail's end...she was delighted that the reality had lived up to her dream. She gently nosed her way back up to his navel, pausing to press a kiss to his taut skin, feeling him quiver beneath her lips.

Hoisting herself unsteadily to the sofa, Christine leaned to where their wine glasses sat, and upturned the rest of her Sauternes.

"Mm, this is so good. Buy more of this one, I love it." She kept her voice light, lowering herself next to him carefully.

Erik raised his head slowly from where it had rested, tipped back on the sofa. She smiled before he could begin spewing the apologies she was certain were brewing in his mouth.

"Now that we got that over with, you can calm down. I'm not going anywhere." Christine leaned into him once more, breathing out a relieved sigh when he slid his arm around her before bending to kiss the valley between her breasts. "I already told you, you're making me breakfast."

.

.

"So what do you think, dear? Keep the prime rib or do the steak?"

"C'mon, Chris. We're relying on you to know what the hoity toity crowd is going to be most impressed with."

Christine's lips pressed into a smile as she examined the menu closely. She knew Meg was already about to pull her hair out over the wedding planning, having discovered that her future mother-in-law wanted an event that would potentially impress the Vanderbilts, even though Meg and Will had a relatively modest budget for their big day.

"Keep the prime rib. Get rid of the spinach puffs and do the prosciutto and melon instead. If caprese salad is being served with the meal, get rid of this tomato thing from the hors d'oeuvre tray and do the bacon-wrapped figs...everything else is good."

She slid the menu sample back across the table to Meg's mother who immediately bent to note the changes Christine had suggested. "Oh! You should also get a case of this really great dessert wine, it's amazing...I-I'll write it down for you." Trailing off, she flushed at the thought of the bottle she and Erik had finished in front of the fire, as the clock struck midnight.

.

.

He'd pressed her back on the sofa, once she'd rejoined him from where she'd knelt on the floor. She hadn't had long to enjoy the sensation of her breasts pressed against his bare chest, as his mouth had left hers, kissing a hungry trail down her body. He'd discovered she was extremely ticklish just below her ribs, knowledge he'd exploited immediately.

"This is a give and take operation, Christine," he'd reminded her smugly when she'd attempted to curl away from him, shrieking in undignified laughter. When he'd unzipped her skirt and slipped it and her panties down her hips, all thoughts of moving away from him and his seeking mouth had disappeared…

He'd poured them the reminder of the wine once he'd sat up, after dragging his discarded shirt over the lower half of his face. She'd been a breathless puddle of herself, liquefied against the cushions of the sofa, her pulse pounding in her neck. As her heartbeat had slowed, Erik had held a glass of the wine out to her, shaking his head in mock disgust at her languor.

"Hurry up, Christine. You don't want to miss this."

Accepting the hand he'd held out to her, he'd tugged her up easily, into his waiting arms. She'd laughed when he clinked the glass he'd handed to her, sipping the sweet, golden wine. Erik had his head cocked as though he were listening for something, turning to her slowly. The chimes from the grandfather clock in the foyer burst to life just then, and she counted, realizing well before the ninth chime that it was midnight.

Christine remembered thinking on Christmas Eve morning that once she suffered through the lonely holiday, she'd still need to make it through a depressing New Year's Eve alone, with nothing but a cheesy movie for company...yet here she was on her neighbor's sofa, completely naked, save for her cable-knit thigh high socks, already one orgasm into the evening.

_New year, new you._

She was ready to start living, wanted to be happy again; she wanted to feel this bold and light, a breath away from laughter every day. She'd been promising herself a new start with the new year for weeks, but now,  _now_  she was excited for it, excited for change and happiness that she would create, and she wanted the this man to be a part of it with her.  _We could be be happy together_ , she told herself. She was sure of it.

The look in Erik's eyes in that moment had stolen her breath; longing and anticipation swirling around absolute terror, and Christine briefly wondered what he saw in hers, just before she closed the distance between them once more.

"Happy New Year, Erik," she'd whispered, leaning in to meet his lips.

.

.

" _Ahem_."

Christine's eyes snapped up to meet Mrs. Giry's raised eyebrow across the table, a knowing smile on the older woman's mouth.

"So, why don't you tell us about this mystery man of yours, Sweetpea. How did you meet? What does he do?"

Meg's eyes were bright as she pushed the wedding folder away eagerly. "Yes! We want to know everything, Chris."

She sighed, knowing she couldn't avoid the questions any longer. "He's my next door neighbor," Christine started hesitantly, "and he's an architect."

"One of Will's groomsmen is an architect, with City Group!" Meg exclaimed excitedly. "Maybe they know each other!"

Christine felt a dull flush spread up her neck at the thought of Erik being a regular fixture at the Shipwrecker's Tavern, a trendy gastropub in the business district downtown that catered to the throngs of white-collared professionals, a group to which she supposed he technically belonged. The thought of him rubbing elbows with Raoul and his office mates for happy hour made her squirm uncomfortably.

_He's not like that,_  she reminded herself. Even with a normal face, she couldn't imagine her neighbor, with his somewhat spiky personality enjoying the back-thumping atmosphere of that privileged boy's club.

"I-I doubt it," she said haltingly. "Erik works for some big international firm, and he works from home, mostly."

"Oh," her friend's excitement visibly deflated before her eyes narrowed slightly. "How does that work? I thought those guys are always jockeying for position in those firms."

_Breathe. You can do this_. Christine wasn't sure why it was so hard to talk about him, didn't want to think about what that maybe said about her.

"He's well established, so it's not like that," Christine murmured softly, thinking of the words Erik had said when she'd asked him nearly the same thing. "And h-he was injured...badly injured on the job."

Erik's normally resonant voice was flat and resigned when he'd answered her question, giving her another one of his careless little shrugs.

_They don't want all the new up-and-comers to see what can happen on sites in places where we have no business building. I don't have to deal with the stares, they don't have to deal with the reminder. Everybody wins._

She'd been peppering his burned shoulder in kisses as he spoke, attempting to take the sting out of the conversation, to heal a tiny bit of the hurt. His bad shoulder, as she had thought of it for moths, was held together with pins, she'd learned when she'd asked him, after watching him roll it as she'd done countless times from her window.

_Shattered. Arm ripped from the socket. Lucky to have a full range of motion._

Erik spoke in short, flat-voiced bursts when recounting the accident that changed his life, she learned, deciding at the moment that the details, like his face, were unimportant.

Mrs. Giry's gentle interrogation continued, although her brows had drawn together briefly at Christine's mention of him having been injured. She asked his age, how long they'd been talking, smiling broadly as Christine described the meal he'd cooked for her on New Year's Eve.

"He sounds wonderful, dear. I hope we-"

"Oh!" Meg exclaimed, interrupting her mother. "Chris, why don't you bring him as your plus one!"

Meg had pulled the wedding folder back across the table and flipped to her seating chart. Christine watched in horror as her friend gleefully made a neat 'X' through the name of one of Will's aunts, jotting 'C +1' above the space.

She felt her face heat as Meg smiled down at her handiwork, reshuffling the errant aunt to a table near the back of the room. She loved her friend, Christine reminded herself. Meg was high-spirited and funny and fiercely loyal, and never, ever looked before she leapt, and Christine loved her for it. Normally she would have appreciated Meg's enthusiasm, but not about this.

"I-I'm not sure about that," she said with a nervous laugh. "We've only gotten together twice, it's a little early to be planning formal events together, don't you think?"

"You've only gotten together twice, but both times were over major holidays," Meg shot back. "That seems more  _intimate_  than just randomly having dinner in a restaurant." Meg's dark eyes were narrowed in challenge, and Christine read the message in her friend's expression loud and clear.

Y _ou've already fucked him, don't give me that._

Christine glared down at the table, not wanting to think about her tangled emotions the previous day, not when the memory of the day before that was so much sweeter.

.

.

She'd woken well before him, sometime in the early morning on New Year's Day.

There had been some point when they'd been spooned together. Christine remembered feeling the long, hard line of him at her back, and his strong arm a heavy, leaden weight around her. They must have disentangled in their sleep, rolling away from one another, for now there were several inches of space between them on the bed.

A hazy, grey slant of early morning light seeped into the room, far less than she was used to in her own bedroom. Once her eyes adjusted to the shadows, Christine looked around the room she'd only been able to snatch a glimpse of the previous night. The lack of light stemmed from the heavy blackout curtains on each window frame, although she saw from her spot on the pillow that two of them hadn't been pulled completely down.

Slate grey walls, dark hardwood floors, and a Turkish rug that she remembered seeing last night, but whose colors she couldn't quite bring to mind: the clean, spartan space felt more like a hotel room than someone's bedroom. There were no photographs on the walls or on top of the high dresser against the wall, nor was there an abundance of personal effects, as there were in her own bedroom, to give her a sense of who he was.

He lived his life downstairs, Christine considered; the big open kitchen and soaring beamed ceilings, the massive piano and cozy library... _that_ was Erik. The well-tended fireplace and warm blanket, glorious music and his messy work table and his funny little cat...there was an odd comfort in knowing how much she already felt at home in  _that_  space.

The always crackling fireplace downstairs would have been welcome in that moment, Christine thought with a shiver, for the bedroom was freezing. She snuggled down beneath the thick blanket, not even sure of when they'd made it beneath the comforter in the first place.

The thought of the second time they'd been together, hours earlier, flitted through her mind, causing a frisson of desire to tremble through her. She'd been on top of him, her hips rolling against his, and his hands had seemed to be everywhere at once; caressing her breasts, gripping her hips, rubbing between thighs, increasing her friction as she ground rhythmically against him. She wasn't sure how it was still possible to  _want_  and  _need_  after the previous night, but the tingle between her thighs scoffed at her incredulity.

They'd had sex twice in his bed after he'd carried her upstairs, and Christine was thrilled that despite her year-long dry spell, she'd experienced spine-quivering orgasms each time.  _Don't forget the one downstairs_ , her mind reminded helpfully, and she squirmed at the memory of what he'd done with his tongue.  _That astrology book was right!_

Their kiss at midnight had continued well after the grandfather clock had ceased its heraldry of the hour. Christine had become very aware of her nakedness as Erik's hands glided over her skin; caressing her thighs, gently swirling over her stomach, palming her breast. When he scooped her up like a bride, lifting her easily into his leanly muscled arms as he rose from the sofa, she'd squeaked in surprise, throwing her arms around his neck.

"Is this how you carried me home on Christmas?" she'd laughed into his chest as he strode down the dark hallway. "Put me down, you're going to break your back!"

Erik was already ascending the equally dark staircase by then, and anticipation had thrummed through her with a percussive vibration.

"Please," he huffed, shouldering open a door at the top of the staircase. "You're like a little doll."

Placing her gently in the center of the bed on top of the fluffy, dark blue comforter, Erik had immediately made to move beside her. He was mid-crawl, a hand on her hip and a knee on the bed, when she'd pushed back lightly on his chest, stopping him.

Instantly, his eyes had widened and clouded with doubt. His throat bobbed as he slid his knee back, his mouth opening to apologize when Christine had quickly cut off whatever he was thinking of saying.

"Off," she'd instructed, raising her leg to run her socked foot across the waist of his still-open pants. At some point he'd tucked himself back into his silky-soft boxer-briefs, but the pants themselves still gaped open, dragged down by the weight of the belt she'd unbuckled. "You're not allowed back on this bed until you're at least as naked as I am. Give and take, sir."

Erik's relief was palpable as he chuckled. "Do I need to leave my socks on too?"

"No," she grinned as he peeled the remainder of his clothes from his lean form. "I want to see your feet. I'll bet you have really long toes."

The thought had delighted her, and she'd wanted nothing more in that moment than to wake up the following morning to see her smaller, pinker toes tracing the long, white boniness of his.

"Here, I'll take these off so we're even…"

She'd brought a knee to her chest to roll down her thigh highs, but her leg was abruptly pulled straight.

"These stay on," he'd murmured.

His sonorous, sensuous voice was thick with desire, and when she'd felt his thumb press into the the ball of her foot, Christine arched in pleasure. The wide expanse of his hands dragged up her legs, pulling them apart at the knees. She had the presence of mind to raise her head briefly as he crawled over, his erection bobbing.

He'd moved like a panther, slowly covering her, and the thrum of anticipation she'd felt exploded into throbbing, burning need. If he was the hunter and she was the prey, that was just fine, she'd decided, wrapping her legs around him. She wanted to be devoured.

They were under the warm blanket now, as dawn broke outside, and his toes were out of sight.

Christine stretched before settling back into the downy squish of the pillow. Erik's bed was insanely comfortable.  _Probably one of those high-end tempur-pedic mattresses_ , she mused, relishing the soft weight of the blanket on her nakedness. She pressed her legs together to excite the tingle between her thighs once more, wondering if it would be impolite to wake him up for another round.

_Calm down! You've had more sex in six hours than you've had in the past year and a half!_

It didn't matter if she knew the voice was right---rather than feeling replete, a ravenous hunger gnawed at her.

Christine had felt drunk off of him the previous night; the spicy smell of him, the way he moved with her, the sounds he made, his matching animal hunger...She wanted to feel that way again, wanted to feel the weight of him on top of her again, wanted to feel his hands moving across her body as she moved against him, wanted to hear and taste and  _feel_.

Christine shifted on her pillow then, turning her head, catching sight of Erik sleeping just beside her. The gaping hole in her chest left by the escaped butterflies felt as though it had been filled with something warm and liquid, and the emotion it contained oozed through her.

Erik lay on his side, facing her, his thin lips parted ever so slightly. His face was smushed into his pillow, his warm breath buffeted by the edge of the navy and white pin-striped pillowcase. The steady rise and fall of his chest was a slow counterpoint to her suddenly rapidly beating heart, and the ravenous lust she'd felt instantly mellowed to something softer, something sweeter.

Christine remembered how much she  _liked_  him.

Erik was funny and sharp and thoughtful. He made her laugh, made her feel warm and secure. Security was something that had been glaringly absent from her life, something she hadn't felt since the day her father received the terminal prognosis.

_We could be happy together._  The more she thought it, the truer the words felt in her heart.

She hesitated before shifting closer to him, watching the steady rise of his chest with a small smile. It was impossible to determine what his nose had been like before his accident, the misshapen lump of flesh providing little in the way of a guide for the cartilage that had melted away. The warped, livid skin of his burns seemed less harsh with his face relaxed in sleep and his brow unfurrowed.

_It doesn't matter._

Christine shifted slightly closer, stretching to lightly brush her lips to some part of him when his eyes had snapped open.

In an instant, she was prey once more, trapped in the wide, fixed gaze of his lovely starburst eyes. She watched with held breath the play of emotions revealed in their gold-flecked depths: fuzzy confusion moved to frozen shock, and Christine was fairly certain he'd stopped breathing when he saw her there next to him, finally clouding with intense regret.

She felt her own lungs freeze as Erik's eyes slipped shut and he rolled away from her, onto his back.

As she watched him drag a hand over his face, Christine felt herself shrinking, felt the cold grey walls slowly tighten around the bed. Her nakedness now mortified her, and she drew her legs up tight to her body. Her clothes were downstairs, she realized; downstairs, a million miles away from this bedroom and this man, who clearly didn't want her there, who obviously regretted what they'd done in the hours before.

She began to shift, centimeter by centimeter across the frozen sheets away from him, preparing herself for a flight out the door. She felt her face burning with heat, knew that tears wouldn't be far behind, and she wanted to be out of this room before she cried in front of-

Long fingers closed around her wrist, preventing her escape.

Sucking in a shuddering breath, Christine tried to steady her emotions, to push back the gasping sob that wanted to tear from her throat. When she forced herself to look back to him, unable to control her trembling lip, Erik's forehead was creased in concern. The regret was gone from his eyes, replaced instead with worry. Against her better judgement, Christine let him pull her back across the mattress to him, allowed herself to be gathered into arms and tucked against the warmth of his chest, before those arms wrapped securely around her.

When her eyes next opened, the room was considerably lighter. Christine realized at once that her head still rested against the good side of Erik's chest, and that dexterous fingertips moved gently at the small of her back.

She listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat for several long moments, mesmerized by its rhythmic tattoo. Long, golden curls were fanned out across both of their bodies in a very deliberate fashion, and the thought of him playing with her hair while she slept made her stomach swoop and curl.

The hand moving at her back flattened out, cupping her hip. "Good morning, lovely girl," Erik's deep voice vibrated through her before he lowered his head to brush soft lips against her temple.

When he pressed her back into the pillow top mattress, trailing kisses down her throat as he moved slowly within her, her legs wrapped around his hips and their hands clasped together, Christine doubted that she'd she'd actually seen the look of absolute regret in his eyes. When she was once again in the circle of his arms, both of them languid and satisfied, she'd been certain she'd imagined it.

"Breakfast order, your highness?"

She smiled, humming against his neck. "Hmm, pancakes maybe? Or french toast! Whichever you like better, as long as I can drown it in syrup. And I don't like my bacon too crispy."

It was several long moments before he spoke, and Christine craned her neck up to him. Erik was staring at the ceiling, his brow furrowed. "This might require a trip to the store."

"Seriously?" she laughed, assuming he was joking. "Well, what  _can_  you make me?"

His eyes sparkled as he grinned down at her with a crooked smile. "Oatmeal with organic blueberries?"

Christine scowled. "Erik, you'd better be joking. I was promised breakfast, not gruel and fruit."

She decided that, despite his breakfast food deficiencies, his loud, unrestrained laughter was her most favorite sound in the world, and that she very much wanted to hear it every day.

He  _wasn't_  joking.

She'd been grudgingly satisfied with the omelette he'd made her, stuffed with onions and peppers and bits of cheese that she'd discovered belonged to the cat. The unsweetened orange juice was another learning curve she'd need to adjust to, she realized.

"That was really good," she'd told him, carrying her plate to the sink, "but we're going to need to work on your definition of acceptable breakfast foods."

.

.

"What's he look like, Chris? Tall dark and handsome? Or suburban dad with a little paunch and a closet full of golf shirts?"

Mrs. Giry tsked good naturedly at her daughter's words. The wedding folder was still open in front of her, and Christine couldn't tear her eyes away from the little '+1' Meg had written in above Will's crossed out aunt. Meg laughed brightly at her mother's admonishment.

"Relax, Sweetpea knows I'm just kidding, I'm sure he's a fox. Please tell me he's not another preppy blonde, Christine."

She shook her head numbly, feeling her neck color. Erik was the complete opposite of her stocky blonde ex-husband, and that wasn't even taking his injuries into consideration. Adding them to the comparison with Raoul tightened her stomach defensively.

"No. He had dark hair, but h-he shaves his head," she choked out. "He's very tall, very slim...very fit."

She smiled at her words, and at Erik's parting shot on her breakfast commentary, that he didn't make it a habit to buy junk food, so she'd need to make him a list, and it was a moment before she realized she was smiling through tears.

"Christine?" Meg asked in concern, leaning over the table to take her hand. "Sweetie, what's wrong?!"

"H-he's...he's-"

Christine choked on her words, the truth full of sharp, jagged edges that caught in her throat. Mother and daughter crowded around her in concern, arms going around her shoulders, and the words she was unable to say broke out on a strangled sob.

_It didn't matter!_  the voice in her head screamed at her. It hadn't mattered when she'd kissed him, when she'd made love with him, had laughed with him, cuddled with him. It hadn't mattered behind closed doors when it was the two of them together, but the that little '+1' was sending her into a guilt-drenched panic attack, especially after her little breakdown the previous evening.

_It didn't matter._

But if it didn't matter, why did it seem to matter so much? she thought to herself, as her friend pulled her into worried, confused embrace.


	10. Chapter 10

The cat had been furious.

After he’d made love to her that morning; after he’d pulled her back into his arms, to lay against his chest while he played with her hair once more; after the teasing breakfast comments, they’d finally left the comfort of his bed.

Christine had watched him move across the room, silently marveling over the long line of his naked back: the pull of lean muscle, each knob of his spine visible beneath the skin. The ivory smoothness of his lower back contrasted sharply with the color and texture of the burned skin just above. Despite the rough, uneven texture of the scars across his chest, she knew after having nuzzled his flat stomach, kissing a trail down his body, that the skin  _ there _ was impossibly soft.

Erik tugged on a pair of dark green lounge pants, bending to pull a grey t-shirt from a drawer. Christine shivered, her own nakedness somehow seeming more pronounced than it had been only seconds earlier. The bedroom was still freezing, and she tucked the comforter around her as goosebumps rose on her arms. Erik moved past the dresser, disappearing into a doorway she hadn’t previously noticed, and she heard water running a moment later.

“How the hell does he have an ensuite and I have to walk down the hall?” she muttered aloud to herself. Christine lowered herself to recline against the pillows when a dramatic sounding yowl followed by a scrabbling sound outside the bedroom door made her sit up sharply. _ The cat _ , she remembered guiltily, wondering if she’d inadvertently evicted Habibti from her normal bed.

Before she had a chance to reflect further, Erik came back into the room, his eyes shining with mischief as he stared her down. Christine was again reminded of a panther as he stalked to the bed with a predatory smile, tugging her covers back as he crawled across the mattress.

His mouth tasted of toothpaste, and she skimmed her nails down the back of his neck as he kissed her, eliciting a growl from his throat. Thin lips moved down her neck, pausing to tenderly kiss the hollow of her throat.

“As much as I’d like to keep you like this indefinitely,” he murmured, running his palm down her bare side, producing a shiver from her, “we have to go downstairs eventually.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “We don’t want you to be indecent. I have it on good authority that  _ some _ people in this neighborhood peep into their poor, unsuspecting neighbors’ windows.”

Christine narrowed her eyes as he laughed at his own joke, clearly delighted with himself. “There’s a toothbrush for you on the bathroom counter. Do you want a t-shirt or a button down?”

“A button down, please,” she answered primly. The image of herself that she’d had in her head the previous evening passed through her mind: wearing one of his shirts in the morning if the night went well.

_ It couldn’t have gone better if you’d scripted it _ , she thought with a giddy smile as she thrust back the blankets and quickly dashed to the bathroom. Once she’d refreshed herself and donned the light blue shirt he’d passed through a crack in the bathroom door to her, she'd rejoined him in the bedroom for another kiss -- “Mmm, minty fresh,” he’d proclaimed --before they ventured downstairs together.

The first indication that they were in trouble was the shredded roll of paper towels outside the bedroom door.

“Oh no!” Christine cried as he bent with a sigh to scoop up the mess. “She’s so mad! Does she normally sleep in your bed? I saw she had a little bed downstairs, I didn’t think...”

“She’d rather sleep on a wadded up newspaper and pretend she’s on one of those sad ass commercials than actually sleep in her very expensive bed.” Erik rolled his eyes as he straightened up. “She’s such a brat.”

Christine gulped, hoping she hadn’t made an enemy. 

“Bibi, what do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” he called out as they moved down the stairs.

She was in the kitchen when they’d found her, swiping furiously at the existing paper towel roll above the counter. The little cat mewled plainitively at Erik when he began to scold her, before fixing Christine with a rancorous glare.  _ This is  _ **_your_ ** _ fault _ , her narrowed eyes seemed to say.

Erik had the good sense to feed the incensed cat first. Christine retrieved her discarded panties from the living room floor as he lectured Bibi, slipping them on with a blush before shaking out her sweater and skirt.

“You’d better not be putting those on,” he called out sternly, just before she seated herself at the table, turning her chair to face him.

Her eyes followed his easy, relaxed movements as he cooked: stretching an impossibly long arm to retrieve a pan without moving from his place at the counter, quickly chopping vegetables, pivoting gracefully to his expensive-looking chef’s range, where he cracked the eggs one-handed. Christine remembered with a smile that watching him cook was what had initially made him seem so attractive to her in the first place.

When he retrieved the cheese from the little bag on the refrigerator door, she immediately saw the cat turn expectantly, leaping to her spot on the side counter, her ears alert. Christine and Bibi’s heads both swung to watch as Erik crossed back to his cutting board---Christine watching in worry, the cat in outraged astonishment as he pulled out several cubes of Bibi’s cheese to chop and toss into the omelette.

“Erik, you’d better give her one,” Christine warned. He’d rolled his eyes again, but bent to kiss her tawny head and gift one of the cubes, placating the annoyed feline.

After the breakfast dishes were rinsed and set in the sink, Christine cautiously approached Habibti, where she’d been pouting on the end of the sofa, staring into the flames of the fire Erik had rebuilt.

“Hi pretty girl,” she’d whispered, hesitantly moving to where the cat perched, offering her hand warily. “I’m sorry we kicked you out of your bed last night, I swear I didn’t know. It wasn’t so bad down here, right? You had a nice, warm fire to curl up by, and your daddy really needed to get laid. Are we still friends?”

Bibi eyed her stonily, hissing in warning as Christine drew near. She sighed, settling back on the sofa, a good distance away.

“I thought we already talked about this. You have to share him. Can’t we both love him?”

Thoughts of the angry cat were pushed aside when Erik entered the room, tugging her to the piano to sing for him. Christine found herself belting her way through jazz standards and showtunes, turning often to watch him play.

That same languid fluidity that he displayed in his kitchen was also present behind his piano. Christine had to restrain herself from moving behind the bench to feel the stretch of muscles in his back as he played. Long fingers flew across the keys with ease, and she could scarcely reconcile in her mind that this was the same tense, angry man she’d met in the backyard, all those months ago.

_ I used to walk in the shade _

_ With those blues on parade _

_ But now I'm not afraid... _

The grandfather clock in the foyer was chiming the one o’clock hour before she knew it, so lost in the twisting whirl of sound and emotion that making music with him caused within her.

_ Gold dust at my feet _

_ On the sunny side of the street _

Music had always been something she regretted not being able to share with Raoul. She'd lost her music when she lost her father, when she lost herself to her grief, but this man had helped her find it once more. To have someone with whom she could share music again...Christine felt her smile stretch as her pulse raced, a breathless giddiness suffusing her.

_ Daddy would have liked him _ .

She wasn’t entirely sure how she wound up in his arms, considering he never left the piano bench, their kisses frantic and heated; nor was she sure how she came to be  _ on _ the piano, perched precariously on the fallboard with a leg over his shoulder as he scolded her for having disregarded his orders not put her underwear back on.

With one hand gripping the piano and the other wrapped around the back of his head, Christine held on to that feeling of lightness and security as Erik delved his tongue into her, bading her to sing for him once more.

She didn’t disappoint.

The piano led to the shower, the shower back to his bed.

She’d wrapped her arms around a pillow for support when he took her from behind, the wide span of his fingers gripping her hip, the other hand braced on the headboard. The sound of her phone ringing on the bedside table was drowned out by her panting euphoria, her breathy gasps punctuated by his deep groans.

When she shook apart into a million shards of refracted light, Christine wasn't sure if she’d ever be able to leave his house. The world outside would surely cease to exist without the rough scrape of his teeth on her shoulder, or the feel of his hand pressed into her stomach as he shuddered against her; the way his pinky had hooked over hers when she covered that hand with her own as his climax faded. Surely the mundane world outside had nothing to offer her that compared with the warm, spicy smell of his neck as she curled against him afterwards, or the soft glow of his eyes as he stroked her back, his long fingers twisting into her curls once more.

It had been a good day.

.

.

“Sweetpea, it’s alright! Whatever it is, it’ll be alright!”

Mrs. Giry hovered anxiously over Meg’s shoulder, which Christine was firmly being held against by her deceptively strong friend.

She knew that they were wrong, it wasn’t alright, couldn't be alright. That little +1 had undone the tentative confidence she’d rebuilt that morning, cursing the previous evening’s weakness and stupidity as she stomped upstairs, away from her treacherous sofa.

Erik was smart and funny and clearly very successful, she'd reminded herself as she'd rubbed her face raw with her washcloth that morning, determined to put herself back together before she saw her friend. He was talented and witty, made her feel special and secure and beautiful. She was easily able to tamp back that hissing voice when she was ensconced in his house, where she had to be the confident one.

Christine had wondered, as she aggressively brushed her teeth that morning, glaring at her reflection, if the daily checklist of his good traits was always going to be a necessity, and what that said about her.

_ He deserves better than that. _

.

.

She’d still been wrapped in the balmy afterglow of the holiday spent with Erik for several hours after waking in her own bed the morning after New Year’s Day, and had drifted to her kitchen with a smile after her shower.

Inevitably, as the day wore on and she was left to dwell inside her own head, that feeling of security had faded. As the brief bit of sun for the day set, casting long shadows across her living room, the hissing little voice in the back of her mind had slithered its way to the forefront, as it had done daily for the better part of the last year.

Its sinuous whisper reminded her of the stricken look in Erik’s eye upon waking to find her in his bed; it questioned whether she’d be strong enough to withstand the stares that a masked man was likely to garner out in public. Her stomach had twisted and clenched, horrified with herself for even thinking the question, yet not entirely certain of its answer. She wondered if they would go out to dinner, to the theater, to events like any other couple, or if  _ normal _ was something that would always be just out of reach.

Christine wasn’t sure why she thought that at the stroke of midnight she’d be a completely new person, despite her months long depression. _New_ _year_ , _new_ _you_ had been something to convince herself, something to look forward to…she didn’t know why she was surprised to still be the same silly bitch she’d always been on January second.

Meg’s wedding had been the first thing that popped into her mind.

She was already tight with nerves over the event, the first time she’d be seeing many of her university friends since before the divorce, since her slip into depression and worthlessness.

She was sure her school friends would be exactly the same as she remembered them, boasting all of the life milestones in which a person was deemed a success to strangers and great aunts: good careers, happily married, children. All of the things she was supposed to have at this point. Social media had been a special punishment she reserved for herself these last six months: the evidence of her friends’ perfect lives, filled with glamorous vacations, beach sunsets, and adorably dressed toddlers.

Christine was reminded, as she curled up into the corner of her sofa, that she didn't have anything to offer to anyone, not really.

Her inadequacies would be on full display at Meg’s wedding.

Tongues would already be wagging about her, she knew: the disgraced, grieving, cast-aside woman. Not good enough to keep her husband from straying, unemployed, a hollowed-out mess. The thought of walking through that ballroom in her maid-of-honor dress with Erik on her arm, in front of all these people who had known the happily married, employed Christine of several years prior left her breathless.

Showing up with a new boyfriend to an event where everyone from her past life would be in attendance would automatically make her the subject of gossip...but a boyfriend in a mask would likely bring an entirely unknown level of malicious attention that she wasn’t entirely sure she could handle. Erik would be miserable, he would be uncomfortable, and worse: he would see the sort of uncertainty in her eyes that would make him go away from her as well, and she would truly be left with nothing, which at that point would be all she deserved.

Sinking deeper into the groove she’d worn into her sofa, absent of her nest of blankets, Christine had curled into a ball of misery and guilt, the warmth and security of the previous twenty four hours seeming very far away, and cried herself into a restless sleep.

Erik  _ did _ deserve better than that, she thought again now as she was surrounded in Giry arms. If she couldn't even talk about him with her best friend, then she needed to stop leading him on and admit that she was too superficial for a relationship with him.

“He’s burned,” she heard herself blurting with a short gasp.

Meg drew away, perfect brows knitted together.

“He was in a terrible accident,” Christine went on, giving mother and daughter a condensed version of the already abbreviated story Erik had told her. “A bunch of the other people on site were killed, he was lucky to be pulled out alive.”

Somehow, Christine found that as she spoke, her words came easier.  _ You just needed to get past this part, dummy.   _

“It was during the war and he was there as a civilian, so it was tricky getting him out,” she went on, noting that mother and daughter were both at rapt attention. “There wasn’t much that could be done for his burns by the time he was home and well enough. H-he wears a mask when he goes out.”

Silence reigned for several beats, and Christine reached out for the nearest champagne flute, heedless of who it belonged to, draining it.

“That’s such a tragedy,” Mrs. Giry murmured, shaking her head sadly. “But he still works, you said, dear?”

“From home mostly,” she nodded, omitting that Erik left the house as infrequently as she did, “but he goes into his office once or twice a week. He’s  _ so _ smart. He plays piano and he has this funny little cat, and I love his sense of humor, and…”

Twinned Giry eyebrows were once again quirked on her, a small smile playing on the older woman’s mouth.

“...and I-I really like him,” Christine finished in a voice stronger than she’d expected. It felt good to give voice to it, to everything that had been rattling around in her mind since Christmas.  _ Maybe this was all you needed to do, stupid. _ “I like him a lot, and I can see myself having a relationship with him.”

There. It was real, the way she felt was real. She’d spoken it into existence, the way she had with Meg at the coffee shop that afternoon earlier in the week.

“Well that’s all that matters,” Mrs. Giry said with finality. “A good man is hard to find, Sweetpea. I don’t need to tell you that. And another musician!”

Christine breathed a sigh of relief. _ It didn’t matter, _ she thought, and for the very first time since Christmas, she didn't feel like she was trying to convince herself. 

“But...are you sure?” Meg asked, her brow still creased. “It’s your first time getting back out there, Chris...that’s a lot of added pressure to take on--”

“Marguerite Elizabeth!”

Christine had felt heat stealing up her neck as Meg spoke, but Mrs. Giry snapped at her daughter before she could speak.

“Are you or are you not planning on standing up in front of everyone you know to make vows of your own very soon? Should we let Will know that when you say ‘in sickness and health’ you’ll only mean half of it?”

Meg’s mouth dropped open as she gasped in horror. “No! No, I didn’t mean that at all! Oh my gosh, I’m sorry Christine, I didn’t mean to--”

“Terrible things can happen to people,” her mother went on sharply, as if Meg hadn’t spoken at all. “They don’t stop being people at the end of it, young lady.”

Christine felt her lungs tighten until she thought she might burst, and the breath she finally released threatened to turn her inside out. Erik was still a person, was still a man, despite his injuries. A man she liked very much, and that was all that mattered. She wasn’t sure who hugged whom first, but Christine again found herself enveloped in Girys, once more smiling through tears.

“I know you didn’t mean anything,” she sniffled to Meg, once the three women were back around the table. “I don’t know if he’s going to feel comfortable going to the wedding with me, so maybe hold off on moving Aunt Evelyn just yet, okay? It’s going to be hard enough for  _ me _ to see everyone.”

Meg snorted gracelessly as she refilled the champagne flutes. “I don’t understand why. You came out of this divorce looking like a supermodel, Christine. I’ve done week-long juice cleanses and didn’t lose weight like that, and you eat garbage. Sonja will spend the whole night crying about how much she hates her job and her husband, Lucy and Steven will get sloppy drunk at the open bar and have a big, ugly fight in the coatroom.”

Christine slapped a hand over her mouth as a mean-spirited laugh honked out. Meg paid no notice as she turned to the refrigerator and continued her assessment of their friend group.

“You and Mr. Fit Architect Man in the mask could make out at the table and no one would notice because everyone will be whispering about Sorelli’s newest twenty year old pool boy or underwear model or whatever. Jammes is the only one who’ll actually care, because she loves gossip and drama to detract from the fact that she’s bored as hell staying home with the kids all day. You dating a grown ass man with a real job who treats you nice is not a conversation starter, Christine, sorry to burst your bubble.”

Christine gaped as Meg topped off each glass with orange juice, finally looking up. “What?! You know I’m right.”

Meg  _ was _ right, she supposed. They’d spent enough time gossipping about their friends and their messy lives over the years for Christine to know she wasn’t wrong. All things she remembered clearly in the light of day, when she wasn’t alone.

“Jammes will make sure Raoul hears about it,” she blurted, thinking about the call she’d received from their old quad-mate. “She called just before Christmas, made sure to tell me all the details about his proposal.”

Meg snorted again as her mother made a sound of disgust. “What a bitch. Honestly though, I’m not surprised. She’s always been like that.  But would it really be so terrible if your cheating sack of garbage ex found out you were seeing someone? You’ll just have to make sure Mr. Fit Architect is extra sexy in his suit, and that you have a ‘why yes I  _ did _ just have great sex, thanks for asking’ glow about you, that’s all.”

Mrs. Giry huffed, and Christine blushed, thinking of Erik in the well-tailored suits he wore to his office on the sporadic days he left the house. The flesh-toned burn mask that concealed his face didn’t detract from the dashing figure he cut otherwise, if anyone bothered to look.

The heat that flushed her cheeks was a direct contradiction to her muddled thoughts of the night before, and she gulped, remembering the way she’d cried confused, guilty tears; the way she’d been unable to shut out that pessimistic voice.

“I need to talk to someone,” she blurted again, feeling her breath trip over her words. “I need help. I-I keep having these...I don’t even know. Panic attacks, I guess? It’s like I  _ know _ things are okay and I’m overreacting, but I can’t make myself stop from thinking it’s all bad. I...I need to stop, to get better. I want to go back to work, I want to start singing again. I want--”

Christine cut herself off, letting out a shuddering breath before continuing as tears burned at her eyes, speaking aloud what she’d been thinking for a week. “I want to have a relationship with this man, but he can’t fix me. I can’t fix him. I need to be happy with myself before I can be any good for him.”

She swallowed down her emotion as both women across the table made sympathetic noises of support. Now that was real too, she thought. She needed to get past this, to start living her life again.

She’d just said so.

“How did you guys start talking anyway? And don’t give me that ‘he lives next door’ crap,  _ Sweetpea _ .”

“I tried to steal his cat,” Christine laughed, sticking her tongue out at the manicured nail Meg was jabbing in her direction

“Seriously?! What a meet-cute! That’s like something out of those dumb Hallmark movies we would watch every Christmas in school!”

The conversation eventually shifted back to wedding talk, and as Meg and her mother bickered over some out of town aunt Christine’s phone buzzed with a text. She glanced down with a furrowed brow, the only person who texted her with regularity being seated across from her.

_ Did you by chance pee on my bed? _

She felt her mouth stretch in a wide grin. Such an innocuous sounding question, as if it were perfectly reasonable to assume she’d done such a thing.

_ Hmm, not that I remember?  _

_ I’m going to have to go with a no on this one, sorry _

They’d exchanged numbers after dinner on New Year’s Day. As she rested in his arms after their mid-day tryst, she’d turned her hooded eyes up to his. “I’m going to make you dinner, okay? I have to go back home and get the stuff.”

“You don’t need to do that,” he’d murmured. “Your hair is wet, you shouldn’t go home until it’s dry.” The thought that he was trying to keep her there warmed her cheeks and she snuggled further into his side. “Besides,” he went on, “you don't need to cook for me just because I made you dinner. That’s not what that was about--”

“Erik, I know,” she interrupted. “It’s for the holiday. It-it’s the pulled pork I used to make with my dad every year. I already bought all the stuff, it’s in my fridge…”

Christine didn’t know how to articulate how important it was to her to make her father’s bourbon and brown sugar pulled pork, that it was a tradition, a tradition that she’d missed last year, a tradition she wanted to share with him... but she found she didn’t need to say anything. As her eyes dropped and her voice trailed off, she’d felt him gently grip her chin, raising her face back to his before lowering his lips to hers softly.

“Okay,” he said simply. “Make me a list of everything I need to grab. You’re not going out with that wet hair.”

They’d prepared the meal together, once he’d returned from his trip to her house. It had reminded her of how much she loved cooking with friends and loved ones, back before her life had gone pear-shaped. Afterwards, they’d been snuggled together on the sofa playing another game of twenty questions, each learning about the other when she’d lifted her head from his arm with a furrow between her eyes.

“Can I have your number? To call you?”

“Yes?” he answered, his bunched forehead and questioning cadence matching hers.

“I’m serious!” she laughed, shoving his good arm. “We’ve been neighbors for almost a year, we should have each other’s numbers for emergencies anyways. Now it feels weird not to have it.”

He’d risen from the sofa as she spoke, fetching his phone from where it sat on the edge of the kitchen counter. Bibi turned from where she’d rested, tucked into his other side, to glare at Christine once more. Through the course of the day, the cat had decided that she could share, as long as Erik paid her equal attention, although the goodwill she’d previously extended to Christine had ended for the time being.

“Weird how?”

She rolled her eyes as he came back across the long room, his eyes bright. Christine had a feeling he was going to bait her into bickering the way he had when she’d arrived on Christmas Eve.

“It’s weird because I’ve had your penis in my mouth several times in the past twenty four hours, and I feel like having your phone number should have come before that, Erik.”

His mouth had dropped in horror and he’d flung the phone to her as though it were on fire. “God, just take it, here! You can have it, just don’t ever say that out loud again.”

He’d settled back onto the sofa stiffly as she doubled over in laughter, the cat quickly claiming his lap. She’d fed her number into his contacts once he’d unlocked the screen, and sent herself a text so that she’d have his number before resting against him once more.

_ Well now I don’t know what to think _

_ Bibi claims it was you  _

_ she’s made a very compelling argument _

Christine laughed at his words, remembering too late that she wasn’t at home alone. Raising her eyes guiltily, she saw immediately that both Giry women were watching her with smiles.

Meg had pulled her into a tight embrace at the door to her condo a short while later, as Christine said her goodbyes.

“I don’t care what he looks like,” Meg told her fiercely. “He could have an extra arm growing out of his forehead and it wouldn’t matter, Christine. I can’t remember the last time I saw you smile like that. I want to meet him soon, okay?”

.

.

The strata was a recipe she’d made countless times, elbow to elbow with her father in the kitchen. She would tell him about her school day as she carefully cracked the eggs and he grated zucchini on the mandolin, listening attentively. Young Christine would sing whatever piece she was working on in chorale, or show choir, or in her private voice lessons as she stirred the zucchini into her beaten eggs; her father would provide the odd harmony line as he browned sausage. She would work on her homework at the small kitchen table while the strata baked, her father across from her doing his grading, always there, always within reach, there to help.

For too long music and love had been absent from her kitchen, she thought as she rooted through the cupboard, locating the mandolin at last. Too long she’d been wandering in winter, alone and afraid.

No more, she thought.

She’d made the call to her doctor as soon as she’d come home from Meg’s condo, afraid that if she waited, the shadows of evening would overwhelm her her confidence, as they so often had. Armed with her referral, the next call had been made and an appointment set for the following Wednesday. Her first therapy session. The time and address were written in ink on the little calendar on her refrigerator door. Now that was real as well.

Her eggs were lined up on the counter like soldiers as she grated her zucchini. “I met someone, Daddy. His name is Erik. He’s a musician, like you.”

One by one, she cracked her six eggs into her bowl as she told her father about her day, her week, her miserable year and how the past month had changed things. “I’ve been so afraid,” she wheezed, her breath catching as tears slipped down her cheeks. “I’ve been so afraid to start living again, but I have to.”

Two cups of milk, half a cup of cheese.

“I know you wouldn’t want to see me like this. I know you want me to be happy. I’m trying, Daddy, but it’s so hard. I miss you so much. I miss you, but I can’t just stay home and be sad anymore. I’m trying to get better.”

She told her father about the color she’d painted her bedroom, the work she was going to have done to the house; about how her upcoming audition for the symphony chorus, and about the appointment she’d just made. She told him about the man next door, about how he made her feel confident and beautiful. “He’s not brave either,” she’d whispered, “but we can be, together.”

Three slices of bread, cubed and laid at the bottom of the glass casserole dish.

“I’m going to ask Erik to come with me to Meg’s wedding,” she murmured softly. “And it’s okay if he says no, but I hope he doesn’t.”

She slid the strata into the oven and began to hum. It had been too long since she’d cooked this way, she thought.

Preparing her father’s pulled pork side-by-side with Erik on New Year’s Day had been easy and comfortable. Christine hadn’t missed the way his eyes had narrowed at the amount of brown sugar she’d heaped into the bourbon and apple cider vinegar mix, but he’d had the grace not to say anything negative, knowing it was her father’s recipe. She’d dipped her finger into the the sticky-sweet mixture and brought it to his thin lips, silently daring him to balk.

He’d held her eye as his mouth closed over her her fingertip, keeping it captive for longer than necessary. Her toes has curled when his tongue had traced over the pad of her finger, sucking lightly before releasing her.

“Perfect,” he’d whispered before bending to claim her lips.

Turning to the sink, she began to sing as she washed the dishes. Music and food and love.

_ Shadows are fallin' and I'm runnin' out of breath  _

_ Keep me in your heart for a while  _

_ If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less  _

_ Keep me in your heart for a while _

Her house seemed less empty that night, the shadows less dark. Tomorrow she would have dinner with Erik, and she would tell him about her appointment. She was going to climb out of this pit and start living again. She would ask him about the look she thought she’d seen in his eyes that morning she’d woke in his bed; would ask if he was going to be brave enough to face the outside world with her.

It would be a good day.

She woke in the middle of the night, a fuzzy dream pulling on the edges of her consciousness. Christine couldn’t remember what the dream had been, but the press of her bladder was going to force her to wakefulness no matter what. She paused when she exited the bathroom a few moments later, glancing down to the window next door out of habit.

The light was on and Erik was there, pouring himself a glass of water from the pitcher in the refrigerator. He was wearing what Christine had learned was his version of “daytime pajamas,” his black horn rims resting on his face.

The glasses made him seem softer from a distance, made her stomach swoop with that giddy excitement that had become so familiar.

Another piece of the Erik-shaped puzzle.

The heavy frames of  the glasses hid the deformity somewhat, gave her a glimpse of that man he'd been before, a man she realized she didn't know.  _ And it doesn't matter, because you like the man he is today.  _ Much as it had earlier in the day, the thought no longer sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

She reached a tentative hand up to her temple, feeling her own oversized tortoise shell frames and when she looked back down to the window, she met his eyes. The wide smile on his face mirrored her own and she could tell, even from this distance, that his eyes were bright.

Erik touched the edge of his glasses and nodded to her before making a chef kiss gesture. Christine laughed delightedly, fluffing out her hair and pouting her lips in a ridiculous pose. Next he pointed to an imaginary watch with a questioning cock of his head. She indicated she was heading to bed, pantomiming sleep, pointing down her hallway. 

She hesitated for a heartbeat, returning his nod and soft smile before blowing a kiss down to where he stood.

Christine turned away, hurrying back down the hall with flushed cheeks. Tomorrow would be a good day. They would have dinner together, and she would tell him about her appointment next week, knowing he, more than anyone else perhaps, would understand.

 

Tomorrow would be good, and the day after that, and the day after that.

She would work hard to make it so.

  
  



	11. Chapter 11

She’d waited two months before mentioning the wedding.

 

_ What can I bring? _

The relentless gloom and cold of winter seemed to be finally nearing an end, as temperatures rose and the sky had begun to stay lighter a bit longer every evening. That week in March, however, had ushered in one final cold snap and the city was hunkered against blowing snow and single degree temperatures once more. 

She always questioned if he needed her to bring anything up on the nights she went to his house for dinner, and his reply was always “just yourself.” She smiled when her phone buzzed a moment later, expecting his usual answer.

_ Just yourself, in your pajamas.  _

_ And bring that terrible bottle of red, please. _

Christine blinked in surprise, not anticipating an actual request to be made. 

She mentally thought through her pajamas as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, deciding that she’d probably need to up her game from her normal default of a t-shirt or cotton tank and panties. The filmy little blue scrap of gauze and lace she’d purchased the previous month flashed through her mind, and heat rose in her cheeks. Even though she knew he’d be  _ very _ happy to see it again, she suspected it was not what he had in mind when he’d requested her to come over in pajamas. 

_ Daytime pajamas it is.  _

Her fleece-lined leggings paired with a long tank and oatmeal-colored cardigan would do. Opening the top drawer of her bureau, she pulled out a pair of fuzzy socks, spying the spa blue lingerie folded at the back of the drawer. 

She’d been out shopping the week of Valentine’s Day with Meg when she’d purchased the babydoll.

“Christine, what about this one?” Meg had called out, holding up yet another piece of outrageous lingerie.

“Meg!” Christine had ducked her head in embarrassment at the sidelong look from an older man shopping with his wife, glancing from the lingerie Meg was waving about to Christine. “I told you, we don’t have that kind of relationship right now!”

“That’s right, you’re ‘taking it slow’. You’re taking it so slow that you needed to get a new IUD.”

“My appointment was three months overdue,” she’d gritted out as the older man cocked his head to eavesdrop more effectively. “That didn't have anything to do with him. Aren’t we supposed to be shopping for your honeymoon?”

In truth, the appointment with her gynecologist had come as a result of Erik’s moment of panic over protection on New Year’s Eve. She’d assured him in the moment that she had an IUD and they were fine to proceed, not remembering until later that week that she’d avoided making her appointment to have the device replaced after it’s expiration before the holidays had come and gone.

“Mmhm. Well, I’m just saying it  _ is _ Valentine’s Day. You might want to speed things up.”

She’d turned away with a flush, having known it wasn’t worth mentioning that Erik was out of town visiting a building site, that he wasn’t due to be home until the day after the hearts and candy-filled holiday.

She’d spotted the blue babydoll on a clearance rack near the fitting rooms as she’d followed Meg, had stared at it out of the corner of her eye as she held their bags, thinking that it was surely a sign that the translucent material was the same color as the sweater Erik had bought her during the Gifts of the Season game.

“I’m trying something on,” she’d called through Meg’s door before dragging all of their shopping bags into the next changing room. 

She’d been staring at herself in the mirror, her blue eyes opened wide, when Meg tapped on the door, demanding to see.

“Chris, I can see your nipples. Those cups are sheer. This is not ‘we’re taking it slow’ lingerie, in case you weren’t sure.”

“No, it’s not,” she’d whispered in agreement.

Christine and Bibi had been sitting in front of the fire with Thai takeout, watching a Hallmark movie the night of Valentine’s Day when the sound of the garage door opening startled her into uneasy alertness. Erik came staggering through the door a moment later, overladen with his work and overnight bags, a giant bouquet of long stemmed roses in his arm. She and the cat had both jumped up to greet him. He’d seemed exhausted when she kissed him, had noticeably deflated when she let him go off to a hot shower alone.

“Ok, let’s go over the plan again,” she’d told the cat, who’d stared up attentively from her spot on the sofa. “I’m officially done kitty-sitting you. We had a nice time, didn’t we?”

Bibi had twisted onto her back, mewling up in agreement.

“So you’re going to be a good girl and let daddy and I have some private time with the door closed, right? I promise we’ll let you in before we go to sleep. Okay? Deal?” The hand she held out was headbutted and Christine gave the cat a kiss between the ears before hurrying upstairs to change. 

The lingerie had been well received. When Erik had come out of the bathroom, a towel slung low around his narrow hips, his eyes had been saucer-wide as they took in the sight of her kneeling in the center of the bed in the sheer blue babydoll. When she’d woken the next morning, she’d still been wearing the filmy scrap of fabric. He’d refused to let her take it off, only removing the matching panties the night before.  _ With his teeth _ , she’d thought, smiling into his neck before cuddling closer into his warm side.

Now the spa blue lingerie winked up at her from her drawer, and Christine decided to pack it in the little bag she brought with her when she went next door for dinner. They were a  _ type _ of pajama, she rationalized. They’d been taking it slow for nearly two months, after all. Maybe Meg was right.

Maybe it was time to speed things up.

.

.

They’d been “taking it slow” since the night they’d had dinner after the holidays, seeing each other no more than once or twice a week in the evenings, and a late lunch on Wednesdays.

“I have some questions,” she’d started hesitantly the night of their post-holiday date, tucking her legs beside her on the sofa after their alternative New Year’s Eve-menu dinner.

When he’d answered the door for her that night, Erik had been wearing the mask. 

He took her coat after a stammered greeting, turning away hastily. Christine felt her stomach clench at his obvious nervousness over having her back in his house. Their perfect day spent together on the holiday suddenly seemed very distant. They’d made stilted, superficial small talk as she watched him puttering around the kitchen: picking out their wine, checking the oven three times more than necessary, doing anything to keep himself in motion, avoiding her eye.

The mask unnerved her.

It was same burn mask he’d worn the other times she’d been over--flesh toned and thin, and Christine could clearly make out the angles of his face beneath, but it wasn’t  _ his _ face. She was used to the uneven texture and color of his burns, the pulled eyelid and melted nose. 

In that moment Christine realized that Erik being comfortable enough in his mask to go out with her, for them to be a normal couple was the least of her worries-- _ she  _ was the one who would need to adjust to the mask. 

“Will you please take that off,” she blurted, interrupting whatever he’d been saying, unable to hold it in any longer.

When she looked up from her clasped hands, it was to Erik’s eyes holding hers for the first time since he’d let her in. She couldn’t discern the emotion that swirled there.

It was a long, tense moment before he turned away and slipped the mask from his face. 

Christine sagged with relief, sighing when he turned back slowly. He eyed her in wary confusion as she crossed the room to him, the small smile on her mouth the first genuine one to cross her face since she’d arrived. 

“Thank you,” she whispered, stretching up on her toes and tugging his shirt until he bent to meet her lips. When she’d pulled back, his eyes were soft, the tension that had been sitting between them since she’d arrived seemingly shed along with his mask.

“What kind of of questions?”

His voice was a mellifluous purr beside her. They were seated in their customary spot before the fire, with several respectable inches between them. The nervousness that left his eyes when she’d kissed him had stayed gone, to her relief.

They’d entertained each other over dinner with laughing stories of their respective undergrads and the manic hysteria of grad school. If she had once allowed herself to lazily become trapped in an unhappy marriage, and if he’d once been in an accident that had left him disfigured and broken, it wasn’t mentioned that night.

It was all she could do to keep herself from cuddling up against him once they were seated before the fire, as she’d done several days earlier.  _ You have things to talk about _ , she reminded herself.  _ You can do this _ . Taking a sip of her wine for fortitude, Christine took a deep breath.

“On New Year’s Day, when we woke up…” She felt her cheeks heat, thinking about waking in bed with him. “You looked like…” Her voice trailed off, and it took a moment to refind her courage. “...like you regretted my being there.”

“I did,” he said automatically, and Christine felt herself shrink. “But not because of you,” he went on hurridley, turning slightly to face her. “That was me.”

“I don’t understand.” She winced at her voice, barely a whisper. She examined the crevasses of space between them, keeping her eyes averted until long fingertips reached out, brushing a gossamer thread of hair from her temple before raising her chin gently. 

“I  _ like _ you, Christine,” he implored her. Erik’s starburst eyes were shot through with worry and regret, and she felt her stomach swoop and bunch under his pleading gaze. “I didn’t want to just fall into bed with you. I didn't expect to do  _ any _ thing, I didn’t think you’d ever want...not with...it’s not what I meant to happen. You deserve better than that, especially after everything you’ve been through this year.”

“I like you too,” she whispered after a moment. She found that she missed the nervous thrum of the butterflies in her chest; this new sensation of an itchiness along her spine and tingling in her skin was unfamiliar and unwelcome. She didn’t miss the subtext of his words, assuming that she wouldn’t want to be intimate with him.   _If he only knew!_ Christine scoffed internally, thinking of the countless weeks of dreaming of having him in her bed.

“I don’t want that to have been a one night stand, Erik, but I don’t regret it...I hope you don’t either.”

“I don’t regret you,” he murmured, his voice low and deep and so incredibly close. She wasn’t sure when she’d shifted, but that respectable distance between them was gone. “You’re perfect, that day was perfect...I just wish I’d been more of a gentleman about it. I wanted to do things the right way with you.”

She was able to taste the wine she loved on his lips. As his arm slipped around her, Christine wondered if it was truly the wine that she loved, or the taste of it on him. When he broke the kiss off, the room spun before her eyes for several heartbeats. 

“You said questions, plural.”

“Yes,” she wheezed, attempting to catch her breath, “I did.” 

It was annoying how easily he recovered from things, she thought, the way he could slow his thrumming pulse and pull himself back to order when she felt ready to shake apart from nerves and anxiety and desire.

“I guess I want to know what exactly you’re looking for.” She felt her face heat as his forehead bunched. “I mean, we can take things slow, I think that would be smart, but I-I just want to know that we’re on the same page.”

“We can be whatever you want want us to be, Christine,” Erik said steadily, “and we can take things as slowly as you’d like.”

The breath she’d been holding let out slowly, and her head dropped back against the sofa in relief. “Okay, I-I just wanted to make sure. I’m starting therapy next week,” she swallowed hard, relieved to see Erik’s forehead smooth out and his eyes soften. 

“That’s good,” he murmured, gently pushing her hair behind her ear. “That’s important. You’ve been through a lot, you’ve had a lot of big changes in your life in a short amount of time. It’ll be good for you to talk to someone.”

Christine sighed again, relief flooding her. She knew he would understand. “Have you gone to therapy before? I’m so nervous already just thinking about it.”

“I did, after.” He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t need him to. His life was very clearly divided into two separate columns of ‘before’ and ‘after.’ 

“It’s...challenging. You have to do a lot of hard work.”

“I have a lot of work to do,” she agreed. “I have panic attacks and I-I just want to be able to be functional again and go back to work...and I don’t know if I’ll be able to be any good in a serious relationship for a while.”

Erik blinked slowly, his face impassive. “Why don’t we cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said in an even, careful voice. 

Christine felt her chest tighten.  _ You’re already not worth the trouble.  _ “I-I mean, not right away. I just don’t want you to be disappointed right now, but that-that’s what I want...eventually.”

“Let’s just take things one day at a time.”

His words conjured up a memory in the recesses of her mind; a cobwebbed echo of an awkward conversation with her biology lab partner during her first year at university. He’d asked her out mid-semester, and she’d concocted a story about not being ready for a relationship after leaving her high school boyfriend behind. 

_ Why don't we just take things one day at a time.  _

She’d been a lazy coward then too, she realized, feeling tears prick at her eyes.

“Erik, if you’re not really interested in anything serious, that’s fine. I know I’m a disaster right now and it’s probably too much to expect, but please be honest with me, I just want to--”

“ _ Christine _ .”

Her voice cut off at the sound of his, and she felt a shudder ripple up her body. Even emphasis on both syllables, a glissando on the  _ s _ and a slight lean on the  _ t.  _ Erik said her name as though it were a prayer, as if he were speaking an offering to the ancient gods.

“Listen to me,” he murmured, cupping her cheek in his massive hand. “You’re going to focus on putting your life back together. You’re going to bo back to work, you’re going to let that glorious voice be heard by someone other than my cat. Every day you wake up you’re going to be a little bit stronger, it’ll be a little bit easier. A year from now you’re going to look back and this last year is going to seem like nothing more than a bad dream.”

“...and you won’t be interested in me until then,” she mumbled slowly, trying to piece through the hidden meaning of his words.

Erik’s eyes narrowed in confusion at her words. “What? No, that’s not--” 

She watched his throat bob as he stopped talking, looking away briefly. Christine let her own eyes slip shut and attempted to control her emotions, to stop the sob that wanted so badly to free itself from her throat.

She was going to get better, she was going to start living again, and she was going to do it for herself...but she knew she’d be lying if she tried to convince herself she hadn’t been hoping he’d be there as a part of it. The tremor that shivered through her as he gently stroked her cheek nearly shook her apart. 

“Christine,” he whispered again, “you’re going to put your life back together...and you’re not going to want someone like me around once you do.”

Her eyes snapped open at his words to see the weary resignation in his eyes.

“Why would you think that, Erik?” That empty cavern the butterflies had left was being filled with something hot and simmering. She was mad at the way her voice broke over his name, angry that she was unable to keep the tears from spilling down her cheeks, she was  _ furious  _ that he would assume she would lose interest once she was less broken, once she had more to offer someone else. “Why?!”

His thumb swiped lightly over her cheekbone, preventing another tear from moving further down her face. His voice, when he finally spoke, was soft and sad. “You’re so beautiful…”

Christine jerked away from his hand angrily. “Why do you say that like it means something? Like it’s important? Being pretty didn’t keep me from having to watch my father die a long, painful death. Being pretty didn’t keep my husband faithful, didn’t keep him from leaving. It didn’t save my job, or keep me from falling apart.”

Ever since she was a little girl, Christine had been an angry crier. It had been mortifying when she was in junior high, even worse when she’d been trying to “win” a fight with her ex-husband. She hated that tears reduced her to being perceived as merely an over-emotional woman, and she was furious with herself for crying at that moment...which only made the tears fall faster.

“There’s only one person being shallow here. My mistake for thinking I was more than just the ‘pretty neighbor’.”

She found herself being pulled to his chest and rocked in his arms, his deep voice whispering apologies into her hair, against her skin, against her lips. 

_ “You’re everything.” _

Her anger ebbed away at the genuine remorse in his voice, knowing this was his issue to work out, not hers.

“Why did you stop going?” she asked after several minutes of laying quietly in his arms, after her tears had subsided. It took him a long moment to answer, but she was expecting the silence.

“It was...hard. It was easier not to.”

_ It was easier to disappear _ , she thought, feeling her heart ache. She remembered the way the college students who lived on the other side of him had walked right by his darkened house on Christmas Eve as though it were invisible, the way she was the only one on the street who seemed to notice the man next door. She hated that he’d simply accepted fading away from existence.

“I want you to go back,” she whispered. “I want you to go back, but I want you to go back for you, not for me. I want to be in a relationship with the guy I really like next door, not a ghost. But you have to want to be him first.”

“How are you so smart if you’re such a mess?” he grumbled after a moment. She huffed in laughter against him, feeling his arms tighten slightly. 

“I wasn’t always a mess, you know.”

The silence that followed was comfortable. They each had work ahead of them, she thought, but they were comfortable together. It was several long moments before he spoke again, in a low voice that made her stomach swoop once more.

“I wasn’t always a ghost.”

.

.

She’d put their version of “taking it slow” into effect immediately. Once a week, Christine would go to his house, kick off her shoes at the door, and head straight to the cat for treats and kisses, mollifying Bibi before seeking her own kiss. On the second night a week they’d see each other, Erik would come to her, flowers in his hands and nervousness in his eyes. The uncertainty of his smile would melt away when she'd stretch up on her toes to meet his lips before tugging him inside. 

They’d cook together, make music together, and then spend the night in each other’s beds, showing their appreciation for the time spent in the other's company with lips and teeth and tongues, tangled limbs and sweaty, straining bodies.

She had a feeling her therapist would raise an eyebrow over their definition of “taking it slow,” but Christine didn’t care. Living her life on her own terms was one of the things she’d decided she wanted to work on. She was doing what made her happy, and didn't feel inclined to explain herself.

_ All is healed _

_ All is health _

On Wednesday afternoons she would go to her weekly appointment. The building, located across the street from a suburban strip mall, was grey and non-descript, housing a chiropractor and an aesthetician on other floors. She liked knowing that to anyone else in the elevator, she might have just been getting her nails done.

“Will you have lunch with me, after?” she’d asked him in a panic, the day before her first appointment. She’d initially thought to call Meg, but was worried she’d need to cry afterwards, and Erik had witnessed her tears nearly every single time she’d seen him.  _ If we’re going to be a couple, he needs be willing to leave the house. _ ..

He’d pinched the bridge between his eyes and seemed to hold his breath when he’d asked her who she was seeing in  _ that _ building, releasing a relieved sigh at her answer. 

“Same practice, different office. We’re quite the pair.”

He made Wednesdays the regular day he went into his office, a sleek, mirrored high rise somewhere downtown, meeting her at the small coffee shop in the strip mall across the street from the therapist's office after her appointment. The coffee shop was quiet during the day, and despite Erik’s obvious anxiety, the two bored baristas barely raised an eyebrow at the masked man who met the petite blonde every week. 

She’d fretted that he was rearranging his entire schedule for her, that he was leaving early because of her, that he was--

“Christine.”

Her voice broke off when he said her name; shivering as she always did. Leaning across the small cafe table, he’d kissed the tip of her nose as she gripped her cup with both hands.

“Who’s going to tell me no?”

When he’d made his own standing Wednesday appointment with his own therapist several weeks later, she had once again felt the fluttering of tremulous wings within her, a handful of colorful stragglers who’d evidently stayed behind. He was trying to be brave, she thought elatedly. 

Christine discovered the bus route to the the little strip mall ran hourly, and that the aesthetician on the building’s top floor offered a spa package of one of each service they offered. Since she was working on “being compassionate and kinder to herself,” she’d decided to purchase the package, availing herself to a massage or a facial or pedicure each week while Erik was in his session before driving home together.

“She asked if I’ve allowed myself to grieve. What the hell does she think I’ve been doing for the past year?” she’d raged as she viciously stabbed a forkful of her coffee house salad. “Lying around in my pajamas for funsies?”

Erik quietly sipped his coffee as she grumbled until his silence unnerved her. “You obviously have an opinion,” she huffed.

“I absolutely do not. There’s no right or wrong answers to this. I told you it was work, lovely girl.”

“You know you’re very cute when you’re full of shit.”

His laugh made him choke on the sip he’d been taking and Christine winked up when he glared at her. 

“I think...there’s a difference between depression and grieving. And that’s all I think. I’ve got to go.” He glanced down at his expensive-looking watch before un-wedging his knees from under the small table and bent to kiss her cheek, his eyes darting self-consciously to the counter where the barista was busy on her phone. “Go get your nails done. I’ll see you after.”

Whereas she spent the hour in the coffee shop telling him about her appointments, sometimes in frustration, sometimes with excitement, Erik would be very quiet after his own sessions. Quiet and contemplative on the entire drive home, and she understood that he needed the space, and let Silence ride serenely in the backseat.

If they made out like teenagers upon returning to his driveway, which they occasionally did before saying goodnight to each other, Christine decided it was well within the realm of “taking it slow,” as she entered her home alone.

Two days later, when she came home from the symphony hall, there was a box leaning on her door. Her audition with the director of the symphony chorus had been nerve-wracking. She’d gone to that audition alone, had prepared a Handel piece that showed off her flexibility and a Verdi aria that showed off her range. The director had been there for years, had remembered her father and expressed his remorse to hear of his passing. It had been all she could do to keep her emotions from bubbling over, and thought that perhaps she understood Erik’s words in the coffee shop after all.

“Let’s hear another,” the director had called out gaily. “Just for old time’s sake, anything you want. Show me what music is ‘Christine’ right now.”

The music for the Barber art song was in her portfolio, and the accompanist trilled through the short opening notes.

_ The late year lies down the north _

_ All is healed _

_ All is health _

_ High summer holds the earth _

_ Hearts all whole  _

She’d cried the entire way home, not entirely sure why. Starting the following Thursday, she would be attending rehearsals with the rest of the symphony choir, in that hall where she’d spent so much of her childhood, where her father’s voice still echoed in the pit and smiled from the staircase. Her first step back into the world.

The box had contained a sleeve from an online art store, and the art print was of a brightly colored sea creature that she instantly dubbed “Rainbow Nessie”. It reminded her of the Lisa Frank folders she’d had in elementary school and a wide smile stretched across her blotchy face. The smile froze in place when she pulled the print fully from the sleeve to see the script adorning the side. 

_ It’s completely okay if you cry today _

As if on command, tears filled her eyes once more, and her smile stretched wider.

He was far from perfect, but Christine couldn’t help thinking that he was perfect for her.

.

.

She hopped from foot to foot in the blowing cold, rapping her mittened knuckles against the glass impatiently once more, annoyed that he’d not left the door unlocked for her on this of of all nights. The cat appeared in the kitchen, cocking her head curiously as she approached the door, her gimlet eyes focused and glowing.

“Bibi, go find daddy!” she pleaded in vain through the glass. Shifting the bag with the wine bottle to her other arm, Christine huffed in aggravation. When she looked up, he was there at last. 

Erik moved swiftly across the room from the direction of the stairs. Christine smiled at the sight of him as he approached, in his grey flannel pajama pants and a fitted black t-shirt that showed the defined cut of his lean arms. His heavy black frames sat on his face, and behind the glass, his eyes were narrowed as he scowled down at her.

He made no move to unlock the door.

Thin lips pressed into a hard line and he shook his head. Christine was reminded of the time she had snuck out in junior high to attend a party. She’d been clumsy on her re-entry to the house, and her father had greeted her at the door with a look similar the one Erik was giving her now. Another sharp gust of wind cut through her coat and she squealed indignantly, mentally trying to run through what it was she’d done wrong. She’d brought the wine, she’d worn her pajamas... _ glasses _ . 

If there was any one indication that they were two dorks who belonged together, she thought, rummaging through her overnight bag, it was the fact that they were both incredibly turned on by the sight of the other in their glasses.

Christine slipped on her oversized frames and stuck her tongue out. He was sliding the door open and tugging her inside a breath later, the rush of warmth from the room made her cheeks tingle. “You were seriously going to let me freeze to death?” she groused, kicking off her fuzzy boots and dropping her bags near the door.

“I don’t ask for much, you know,” Erik’s rich, resonant voice rumbled at her neck. 

“Yeah, well you--” Her thought finished on a squeak as he scooped her up in his arms, carrying her to the sofa and pulling the blanket around her. Any rebuttal she’d been planning was lost as his mouth descended on hers, lips and breath and tongue, and Christine had no recollection of what she’d been about to say by the time he’d stopped kissing her.

A big band playlist was chosen to sing along with when he pulled her to the kitchen. She sputtered in outrage when he announced they were making his boeuf bourguignon recipe, which was the “only thing” in which he claimed her wine was good for. When he stood behind her at the counter, slipping his arms around her as she peeled the papery skin from an onion, her outrage was forgotten.

_ I've got you under my skin _

_ I’ve got you, deep in the heart of me _

_ So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me _

Erik’s lips ghosted at her neck and she faltered on the next line. It had been several weeks since he’d last worn the mask when she came over, since the night she’d been waiting for him in his bed in her new lingerie. 

Music and food and love.

“Taking it slow” was just a thing to say at this point.

“Now what?” she asked, turning to him when the enameled pot had been slid into the hot oven. 

“Now we’re going to go upstairs,” he murmured, setting the timer on the oven, “and take these pajamas off. We have an hour before this will be done.”

She’d slipped his glasses off once they were in the sanctity of his room, waiting for him to do the same to her, but he’d just pushed her to the center of the bed. Kissing a line down her body, he told her to leave her glasses on as he pulled her legs over his back. She’d dragged her nails lightly down his neck and across his shoulders as he moved his tongue against her, until light began to dance behind her eyes and she’d been too paralyzed in pleasure to do anything more than grip the back of his head as she rode out the cresting wave of bliss that he brought on. Afterwards, he’d wasted no time in flipping her into her favorite position: laying prone, flat on the bed with him laying over her, pumping into her slowly and steadily until they both found an excruciatingly slow release. She’d slipped his glasses back on his face once he’d rolled away, kissing his thin lips gently.

It wasn’t until after she’d followed him back downstairs, feeling loose-limbed and satisfied after their dalliance in his bed; not until after he served her the meal that they’d prepared together; not until she was resting across his lap in front of the fireplace, gently kissing the pulse point in his neck that she decided she was done “taking it slow.”

“You know my friend Meg is getting married, right?”

“Mmhm.”

Christine craned her neck to mock glare up at his flat reply. She’d learned his little non-committal “mhms” were varied in their meanings.

Erik had briefly met Meg already, a week or two after he’d come home early on Valentine’s Day. Christine wouldn’t admit to having contrived to have them at her house at the same time; she had absolutely no idea how the sink in her upstairs bathroom had randomly started leaking just a few minutes before Meg was due to to pick her up to tag along for a dress fitting. The entry on loosening the PVC pipes in her u-bend was deleted from her search history right after she’d sent him the panicked text, and he was rapping on her door a few minutes later.

Meg kept the smug smile on her face the entire way to the little bridal salon, grinned like a shark when Christine hugged Mrs. Giry, who was already there waiting, and could barely wait until the solicitous attendant had left the room before crowing “I met Christine’s boyfriend!” to the room at large. Christine had felt her face heat as the two young women on the sofa turned at Meg’s exclamation.

“Oh?” The arched brow of her mother was a mirror image to the one Meg sported.

“Yep! Mr. Fit Architect, in the flesh. Very tall.  _ Very _ sexy voice. Mask is super weird, but I’m sure I can get used to it. He seems like an asshole, Chris. I like him a lot!”

Mrs. Giry had gaped in horror as the little attendant came back out with glasses of infused water and Meg fell silent. Fire flooded Christine’s face to very top of her head, and she hadn’t been able to keep from feeling affronted at Meg’s words. Erik had flattened himself against the wall when Meg rang the bell, but had recovered his nerves as Christine dragged him down the steps to say hello, and had been perfectly polite.

When the attendant had scampered out of the room once more, Meg had sipped her water before continuing as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “...And I mean that in the best possible way, Christine. I can tell he has a bit of a bite. That’s good, that’s what you need. You  _ don’t _ need another Raoul, another back-slapper who tries to be everybody's best friend. This guy will see someone being a shit and he’ll call them a shit, he won’t make excuses. I’m telling you, that’s what you need.  _ And _ he’s crazy about you, I can tell.”

Christine had blinked in surprise as the bridal gown was brought out. Meg’s assessment of Erik was actually spot-on, she’d realized, beaming as her friend was fastening into the corset of her dress. He was far from perfect, but he was perfect for her.

From her spot in his lap, she fisted a hand in his t-shirt. The fire was warm, dinner had been heavy, and the sex they’d had earlier had been supremely satisfying. It would be easy to let her head drop against him and float away to sleep, avoiding this conversation, but she had given up taking the easy way out of things.

“C’mon, let’s go to bed.” She struggled to her feet, grasping his hands and tugging him up and down the hallway after the flights were flipped off. “You know I’m the maid of honor, right? I think you should come with me. It’ll be fun.”

“Come with you?” All traces of sleepiness were gone from his voice, being replaced instead with naked fear. When he paused in front of the bed, Christine could see his forehead was bunched in consternation, causing his glasses to slip down his face. “But--all of your friends will be there. Christine, you don’t want me at something like that. Your friends will--”

“If my friends have a problem with my boyfriend,” she said carefully, pulling the tank over her head and casting it aside, “then I’m not sure how good of friends they are in the first place.” 

Christine reached up to his face, ignoring his wide eyes and panicked expression. “God, you’re so cute in these,” she murmured, gently pulling the horn rims from his face, turning to set them on the table with her own. “You can say no if you really don't want to come,” she continued softly, tugging his shirt up his lean chest and over his head. “But I really do want you there, and I hope you’ll think about it. Now lie down, there’re things I want to do to you before we go to sleep.”

“But--”

“No buts,” she interrupted firmly, pushing him down. It was her turn to kiss a trail down his body before taking him in her mouth, and she wanted him to enjoy it, not think. “I just want you to think about it, but not right now. Right now we’re doing  _ this _ .”

He loved fisting his hands into her hair, and that night was no exception. Afterwards, as she snuggled into the inferno of his chest, feeling his fingers gently moving through her hair as her eyes grew heavier, Christine realized she hadn’t cried at all that day.  _ Not even once. And that’s okay too. _

 

Tomorrow would be a good day.


	12. Chapter 12

“You know you can still change your mind. I’ve got my car keys right here, you can slip out the door and no one will know.”

“Daddy!” she cried in exasperation. It was an offer her father had made several times already that day. 

First as her golden curls, which she wore loose and spilling over her shoulders, the way the man she was meeting at the end of the long aisle liked them best, were being tamed into submission; once more as her mother’s veil, long and floaty and trimmed in scalloped lace, had been pinned into place at her crown; and a third time as she was handed her massive bouquet: peach and pink ranunculus and peonies, ivory roses, and bright green bells of Ireland. Now it was just the two of them, waiting for the soft strains of music to beckon her down the aisle.

“I just want you to be happy, princess. If he makes you happy, then that’s good enough for me.”

“He does,” Christine said decisively as they took their positions behind the closed doors. “I love him.”

“He makes you smile. You’re so beautiful when you smile...just like your mother...and he  _ is _ very tall,” her father mused. “You’ll never need to worry about reaching things off a high shelf. That’s a desirable trait that’s too often overlooked, I suppose.”

Christine laughed in outrage before cutting off with a sputter. Raoul was just a bit taller than her, compact and stocky. Meg had laughingly pointed out that he wasn’t at all “her type” when she’d first met him, back during undergrad. 

Christine looked down at herself with a start. The wedding dress she wore was the ivory confection of tiered lace that she’d fallen in love with, but was not the dress Raoul’s mother had insisted upon, which she  _ had _ worn, she clearly remembered looking at herself sadly in the mirror on her wedding day. 

The flowers were different, her hair was different, her father’s face was more creased than it had been in her wedding photos.

“As long as you’re happy, Christine,” her father said again, and she woke with a start. 

It took her a long moment to catch her breath. Her hair had been in a tight updo on her wedding day, she remembered, and her dress was the chilly white satin column that Raoul’s mother and sister had chosen, calling the frilly lace dress she’d loved “impossibly outdated.” Her mother’s veil had been deemed too poor a match to the modern dress. The pastel flowers she’d wanted were vetoed in favor of an architectural bouquet of calla lilies.

Nothing from her dream was real. Nothing except for her father's repeated offers of escape.  _ That _ he'd done, she remembered. Repeatedly.

Christine slipped from the bed and staggered into the ensuite. Splashing water onto her face, she thought about the image of herself in the lacy gown that she’d loved. 

Echos of the tearful fight she’d had with Raoul shortly before their wedding bounced in her head, a sharp counterpoint to her glowing happiness in her dream. She’d been furious that her future mother and sisters-in-law were steamrolling every idea she had, quashing everything she’d liked, had filled the guestlist with people from their club, leaving little room for her to make decisions on anything. 

_ That’s in the past _ , she reminded herself.  _ You’re the mistress of your own actions, and you don’t have to let anyone make you feel bullied again _ . 

It was far from the first three a.m. pep talk she’d given herself in recent weeks, and Christine was certain it wouldn’t be the last.

When she re-entered the bedroom, she saw that Erik had rolled and was now on his back, sprawled across the mattress. Bibi’s gimlet eyes flashed at her from the little blanket nest at the top pillow as Christine climbed back into bed. The chill air of the arctic bedroom had risen gooseflesh on her arms and she quickly pulled the comforter over herself, tucking into Erik’s molten side, nudging his arm until it came around her. Christine sighed contentedly, resting her head against his chest. 

“If we ever get married, you’ll let me have any dress I want, right?” she asked his sleeping form, rubbing sof circles against his stomach.

“Whatever you want, lovely girl.”

Erik’s voice was heavy with sleep and barely audible, and Christine struggled to keep from laughing aloud and waking him fully. His breath was steady and even, passing through his parted lips.  _ Attentive even when he’s sleeping, _ she thought with a smile. Tightening an arm across his scarred body, she drifted to sleep surrounded in his warmth.

When she woke again, hours later, her vision was partially obscured by her hair. Long curls were fanned out in a massive arc, and she could feel him still gently combing his fingers through them. 

“You’re very silly,” Christine murmured sleepily into his skin, taking care to not move her head and muss his handiwork. “I feel like you missed your actual calling in life. Hair stylist to the stars.”

“You have such pretty hair,” came his mumbled reply, carefully placing a curl across her eyes. “Rapunzel hair.” 

She protested with a laugh, blowing the offending lock away. Running her fingertip gently over the rough, raised line on his bad shoulder, she traced what she now knew was one of several surgical scars. “I thought I was a little doll. I can’t be both, make up your mind.” 

“You are,” he insisted stubbornly. “A little Rapunzel doll. Fairest in all the land.”

Christine laughed again before pressing her lips to the ruined skin beneath her cheek. Erik’s fingertips dragged lightly down her spine before settling firmly on her hip. Above her head, she could hear his throat working and could clearly envision his adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed back his insecurity. 

He was always at his most delicate when they woke together, she’d learned over the past several months. It would pass quickly, but his self-doubt was there in the bed with them, as real and tangible as the cat above their heads. Christine had grown accustomed to him being the steady one, the one quietly reassuring her as she twisted with anxiety during the waking hours, or knocking her flat with his brutal honesty and solemn acceptance. Fresh from sleep though, he was rawer, more exposed. She’d learned to treat his early morning feelings gently. 

“You really want me to go with you?”

Christine took a moment to breathe into his skin, the steady thump of his heartbeat anchoring her. Two weeks had passed since the night she’d told him about Meg’s wedding, two weeks of non-acknowledgement. She had admitted to her therapist that she was disappointed, but she  _ had _ told him he could say no...she hadn’t realized it was something he’d evidently been chewing on since then.

“I do."

Over the last several months she had learned that her initial assumption of Erik being anxious over leaving his house were not entirely correct. What spiked his heart rate was the thought of leaving the house with  _ her _ .

“People don’t want to be caught staring,” he’d told her scowlingly one night. “God forbid we make eye contact...but it’s not like I’m a hermit. They just...don't look.” 

He was used to being a ghost; he'd had more than a decade of acclimation to being invisible. 

Having her in tow removed that, and the new brand of scrutiny unmoored him.

“I want you to be there with me, but I don’t want to pressure you,” she murmured lightly. “Meg will be very disappointed if you don’t come though, so you might have to explain yourself to her. She can be  _ very _ dramatic.”

The hand at her hip tightened briefly before raising to tug on the end of a long curl.

“You know,” she began softly after some minutes had gone by and he'd still said nothing, “Rapunzel’s prince fell from the tower into the garden of thorns. He was blind and disfigured afterwards...but she loved him anyway.” Christine traced soft patterns against his skin with the tip of her nail, pausing to steady herself before continuing. “He’d loved her singing, and afterwards he found her by listening for her voice, singing in the forest, and they still lived happily ever after.”

Erik remained quiet for several long moments, and Christine let Silence curl up in the corner of the room as she closed her eyes. They hadn’t said  _ those _ words to each other yet, and she wondered if she’d crossed some unspoken line. 

_ It’s true though _

She knew that what she’d said was true. She hadn’t said  _ it _ yet, that seemed too big, too frightening a step, but that didn’t mean that she was unaware of what she felt. 

He shifted slightly then, the soft brush of his lips felt against her head. She smiled against him, her eyes still closed. It was a mystery to her how Erik managed to be so warm at night, how his normally cool skin seemed to be fueled by lava once he was resting, but she was glad for his heat as she tightened her arm around him.

“Didn’t she get knocked up in that version of the story?”

Christine opened her eyes, her soft smile flattening out.

“With twins even, right? This random asshole is just climbing into towers, helping himself to a slice of sheltered, naive princess on a weekly basis.”

“Erik.”

“He knocks her up, gets her thrown out of her house with no skills or child support, and she’s living in the woods, raising his kids on nuts and berries.”

“ _ Erik _ !” Christine pushed herself up, slapping his chest lightly as he laughed. “ _ You _ are the asshole!” She glared down at him, his eyes laughing and bright with mischief. 

Before she could react, the covers were abruptly yanked away and she found herself flipped to her back, her head landing in the center of a squishy pillow that hadn’t been there a second earlier. The cat yowled, annoyed at being jostled, and fled from the room. 

“If I go to the wedding with you, does that mean I get to call you my girlfriend?” he asked her, his face just inches away from hers.

“Yes.” Her voice was a tremulous whisper, a tremble of delicate, colorful wings. Christine let her eyes flutter closed with a sigh as his lips sought the delicate side of her neck. “I mean, I hope you haven't just been telling your therapist you've been having relations with the neighbor, have you?”

His shoulders shook in laughter as he dropped against her and she joined him, her heart singing. 

His warm breath against her only emphasized the chill of the room, making her squirm beneath him as the air prickled at her skin once more. As she shivered, Erik's hot mouth alighted on the tightened peak of her breast, making her gasp.

“I feel like this is why you keep the room so damned cold.” She gripped his uneven ears as he suckled her, the pressure of his mouth causing a corresponding pulse between her thighs.

“This is exactly why I keep the room so cold,” he agreed once he'd released her breast, continuing to kiss his way down her body.

Christine arched against him. His mouth was moving over her soft stomach, reverently paying homage to her skin, visiting each of her hip bones with his lips, but his long musician’s fingers were already stroking her slick core. A gasp escaped her mouth as he circled that little bundle of nerves, his forearms lifting her hips and spreading her legs.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” Christine asked in as stern a voice she could, despite the way her breath was already hitching with delight, eagerly anticipating the hot glide of his tongue against her most sensitive parts. Erik peered up at her, his beautiful starburst eyes alight with color, his smile wide and devilish. It struck her how deeply unimportant the rest of his face was when he smiled at her that way, how his bright eyes transformed him.

“Helping myself to a slice of my princess, what does it look like?”

She might have been embarrassed by her unladylike honk of laughter under different circumstances, but at that moment, like his face, it didn't matter. She meant to argue, to continue their bickering because she knew they both enjoyed it, but he lowered his mouth to her then and the rest of the world dropped away, a breathy moan replacing the rebuttal she’d been forming.

It was going to be a  _ very _ good day.

.

.

“Christine! You look so great!” 

Jammes swung her cinnamon-colored hair over the shoulder left bare by her trendy tunic sweater and pulled Christine into a hug. Jammes was right, she reminded herself. She  _ did _ look great. 

She’d gotten the pineapple sugar scrub and facial that week during Erik’s appointment in preparation for Meg’s shower, and her skin fairly glowed. She’d gone to a salon to have her hair done, had bought new makeup, and her eyebrows were shaped for the first time in the past year. Her peach-colored lace dress was brand new, and her golden curls bounced down her back.

Meg’s shower was the first time she would be seeing her university friends in ages, and she was going in prepared.

“How’ve you been hanging in there, hon?” Jammes’s brows drew together sympathetically, and Christine repeated the mantra she’d been working on in therapy in her head.  _ No one can treat you in a way you don’t allow yourself to be treated.  _

Erik’s advice was less practical, but it had come with the benefit of making her laugh. 

“Just tell her to get fucked and then go on with your day,” he’d advised succinctly, never lifting his bespectacled eyes from his computer screen. She’d been fretting over Meg’s upcoming shower, despite the fact that Erik had been pointedly ignoring her as he tried to work. Christine had thrown a cat toy at him, and he’d barely flinched. 

“Is that what you do to Nadir?” she’d asked from where she sat placating Habibti on the floor.  The cat had jumped down from her perch on the sofa back in alarm when she saw her stuffed sushi roll go sailing across the room, and had climbed into Christine’s lap, mewling in distress. “Look, now you’ve upset Bibi too. Is daddy being a big meanie weenie? He is, isn’t he?”

“That’s what I tell him in every single conversation, as a matter of fact. Don’t go filling her head with lies about me. Give her the wonton and she’ll forget we’re even here.”

The wonton-shaped catnip toy was newly stuffed, and they’d amused themselves for over an hour the previous night watching Bibi go on a drug-induced adventure around the living room floor. 

Christine had finally been properly introduced to Erik’s work partner when he came over one night to “troubleshoot” an aspect of their latest project, as they called it, which she’d discovered meant shouting at and over each other, for the better part of the evening.

“You’ve been letting me call him the wrong name all this time?!” she’d fumed when the smiling man who was  _ not _ named Nasir had corrected her after hanging up his jacket. He and Christine both turned in unison to glare at Erik, who seemed completely unbothered.

“It was better the way she said it,” he’d shrugged. 

Na _ d _ ir had insisted on helping to a plate of the leftovers that had just been cleared, with Christine’s encouragement, to Erik’s annoyance. She learned that Nadir was the structural engineer responsible for ensuring Erik’s fanciful designs were able to be rendered into reality. He’d told her about his parents having fled Iran in the seventies, how his police officer father had expected him to follow in his footsteps, which Nadir had planned on, until his father’s death in his first year of undergrad. 

“I switched to engineering and didn’t look back. That’s how I got saddled with this grump.” 

She’d noticed, through the course of his meal, that the man’s jade-colored eyes would slide from her to Erik in amusement, as if he were trying to work out exactly how they fit, the sharp-edged smile never leaving his face. He struck her as someone who was used to charming his way out of situations, his smile a touch too slick and knowing. Additionally, she’d noticed that Erik had grown progressively more sullen and snappish though the evening under his smiling friend’s scrutiny. 

That cavern in her chest had begun to shrink, had grown smaller every day as she worked on filling her life with  _ life _ once more, but at that moment the small space was being steadily filled with a protective annoyance.

“This is Christine,” was how he’d introduced her...not _my_ _friend_ Christine, much less _my girlfriend_ Christine. She didn’t know how he’d defined their relationship to his friend, wasn’t entirely sure what kind of friendship they had in the first place. Her skin prickled as sharp green eyes moved over her once more, and she found that she couldn’t shake the suspicion that a joke would be cracked the instant she went home. 

At length, as the two men began to argue in earnest over the blueprint on the drafting table, she decided to remove herself from the equation. Christine waited until there was a lull in their shouting to move from where she’d sat on the sofa to behind Erik’s chair at the work desk, slipping her arms around his chest.

“I’m going to bed,” she murmured into his neck, kissing the exposed skin beneath the mask. 

He’d turned his head in surprise, expecting neither her announcement or touch. She hadn’t planned on staying, had fully intended on going home after meeting Nadir, but she was determined to lay to rest any speculation the man may have had about their relationship, and dared him to crack any jokes while she was just upstairs.

“It was nice meeting you officially,” she smiled brightly, turning to Nadir. He smilingly assured her that he was  _ most _ happy to finally meet her, as cheese was retrieved from the little baggie on the refrigerator door, catching the cat’s immediate attention.  “C’mon, Bibi! Let’s go upstairs and let daddy work.” 

Erik’s words of advice surfaced in her mind as Jammes waited and Christine bit back a smile. She was confident she wouldn’t actually need to employ his nuclear option that day, but it was good to keep in mind.

“I’ve been great! How are the kids?” 

_ It's only half a lie, _ she reminded herself as Jammes pursed her lips, evidently displeased with Christine's deflection. The Opera had finally gotten back to her, and while the news that they didn't take drop-in auditions had been disappointing, they'd emailed her all of the information she needed for the company’s open audition at the end of the summer.

In the meantime, the orchestra chorus was more than making up for it. She'd been welcomed warmly, and had even managed to secure a small solo in the upcoming Easter program. She'd been overjoyed, had flung herself into Erik's arms that night in excited happiness, making him promise to help her prepare at home. 

It was a promise she soon found herself nearly regretting, as he'd proven to be a firm taskmaster, making her run scales with precision as he critiqued her posture and breath support. Sugary drinks had become forbidden, he was trying to micromanage her dairy intake, and on more than one occasion Christine had needed to remind him that  _ she _ was the one with the conservatory training. Still, it was another thing they did together; music and cooking and laughing and loving.

There had been a flyer on the community board near the entryway where the choir rehearsed, advertising a small vocal program that was being run at a nearby Montessori, and she'd emailed an inquiry just that week, figuring it was worth a shot to talk to someone, and would be a better gig than subbing at the local middle school. 

She was seeking employment, she was taking care of herself and her house, she was having regular, excellent sex with a man who meant the world to her...all things considered, taking into account where her life had been just a few months prior, Christine thought she  _ was _ doing great. Meg’s mother came around then, encouraging everyone to make a plate before they settled in for shower games, guiding Jammes to the banquet table, and Christine flashed the older woman a grateful smile. 

Her rescue was short lived, unfortunately. 

“Christine, did I tell you what I’m planning?” Sonja asked during a lull in the games Meg’s future sister-in-law had created. “Spencer decided he doesn’t want to come to the wedding with me, so I thought I’d ask a single friend instead.” 

She raised her eyebrows meaningfully, and Christine remembered Meg’s words, that day in her kitchen.  _ Sonja will spend the whole night crying about how much she hates her job and her husband.  _ It appeared Meg wasn’t too far off the mark.

“Wow, that’s a big step,” she murmured, busying herself cutting a forkful of cupcake. The frosting was pure sugar, and her eyes slipped shut in bliss.  _ He’ll never know… _ “Have you discussed that with Spencer?”

“Have I--not for me, silly! For you!” Sonja’s cheeks colored at Christine’s implication, and Jammes quickly picked up the mantle of _concerned_ _friend_.

“Isn’t that such a cute idea?! It might be a love connection right there at the reception! Sweetie, none of us want to see you alone. I can only imagine how hard it’s been since you and Raoul split up--”

“Cheated,” Meg cut in sharply. “Since Raoul cheated, you mean. Let’s not pretend it was something different.” Jammes and Sonja exchanged a brief look, and Christine was reminded that their husbands had both been in Raoul’s circle of friends in school. “If Spence isn't coming with you, I’m changing your RSVP to one, Sonja. Will has an aunt from out of town who decided to make the trip, so we could use the space. Besides, Christine doesn’t actually need your help in that arena, she’s doing just fine on her own.” 

“Do you think we should open presents, ladies?” 

Christine had never met Will’s sister until that day, but she already liked her. Once she’d cut short the conversation about Sonja’s “cute idea,” the woman had taken it upon herself to run interference the rest of the afternoon, keeping Christine from being surrounded and inserting herself blithely into nearly every conversation. 

“My husband ran out on me when our twins were just toddlers,” she confided as Christine helped her box up the cake in the small prep room off the hall. “I take it you have a new boyfriend?” 

Her smile was kind, and Christine found herself nodding with a small smile of her own. “Yes, but it’s still early days. They’ve always been the gossips of the group, and they run in the same circles as my ex,” she said with a small laugh, struggling to keep the tears that wanted to break forth at bay. “It--it hasn’t been an easy year. I don’t want to have to…” 

She trailed off with a swallow, and other woman smiled again. “You don’t have to give them everything. Some things are just for you,” she assured her firmly before pasting a fake smile on her face and turning back out the door, a stack of the dessert take-home boxes in her arms.

“You are both strong and smart enough to handle everything you’ve going on today,” Christine murmured to herself before following. That affirmation came courtesy of an adorable, bushy-tailed red panda, the latest in the small collection of the whimsical art prints she now owned. Erik had never copped to buying them for her, and she had never mentioned the cardboard mailing sleeves that showed up weekly, but she loved them, and looked at them daily.   _ You love  _ **_him_ ** , she thought with a blush as she gathered up her own armload of the cake boxes. 

New gifts, for a new season.

By the time everyone had squealed their goodbyes, air-kissing and exclaiming how much they were looking forward to the wedding, Christine had divulged that she was singing again and that she was seeing someone. Jammes, unsurprisingly, had wanted to hear all the details.

“Oh, I’ve already met him,” Christine overheard Meg telling her cheerfully. It hadn’t surprised her that Jammes decided to press someone else for information when Christine proved to be tight-lipped. “He’s great!  _ So _ nice. Treats her like a queen, which is nice to see, you know, since Raoul was such a worthless piece of shit.”   

Christine had choked on her drink, turning away quickly. She knew her friend’s assessment of her ex-husband wasn’t completely fair. Raoul had always been sweet natured and easy going, and it hadn’t all been bad, after all. Forgiveness was something she was working on in therapy, but that certainly didn’t mean she was going to jump in to defend him, not then. Not to Jammes, at least, who was certain to make sure the information that Christine had a new boyfriend found its way to his ear before the end of the day. It was Sonja’s turn next to question Christine, although by that point, she’d decided she was quite done feeding the gossip circle. Taking Meg’s new sister-in-law’s advice, she kept the rest for herself.

She’d checked her phone once the last of the guest’s cars had pulled away.

_ Just making sure you didn’t break a champagne bottle over anyone’s head _

_ Bibi’s got bail money ready, just in case _

Her laughter echoed through the empty room, and Meg turned with a glinting smile.

“Oh, I know  _ that _ laugh,” she smirked. “What’s Mr. Fit Architect up to today?”

“Just checking in to see if I committed felonious assault.”

The sister-in-law laughed as she removed tablecloths, and Mrs. Giry smiled. Christine grinned widely, quickly typing a response, letting him know she hadn’t even used his advice.

“And I didn’t, so I think that qualifies as being another good day.”

.

.

_ Hi _

_ Are you here?  _

_ You didn’t change your mind, did you? _

The bridal party was clustered in a small room off the large reception hall, and the vibration of the music the DJ was playing could be felt through the thin walls. She was about to enter the room alongside the best man, and her stomach had managed to tie itself into the types of knots she’d never mastered during her brief stint as a Girl Scout at the thought of finding the chair next to hers empty.

_ Hi _

_ Technically yes _

_ Not yet… _

Christine huffed an aggrieved laugh at his response, her heart slowing it’s climb to her throat. She could imagine what “technically” meant. The previous night, she’d gotten to witness Erik in full-on existential crisis mode, pacing across his small flagstone patio, lighting cigarette after cigarette as he fretted over the following evening. As Will’s brother took her arm, she wondered if he was pacing in the parking lot, or perhaps hiding up in the rafters.

.

.

She’d let herself into the house using the key she’d had for weeks, surprised when she hadn't found him busy at his drafting table. Following the light in the kitchen, she’d found Bibi sitting tensely by the door.

“What’s daddy doing out there, pretty girl?”

The little cat had yowled when Christine came into view. Bending to stroke the cat's tawny back before she peered out the glass door, she found him in his current state. 

“I’m going to remind you of this moment the next time you try to tell me that my mac and cheese is nothing but processed chemicals, Erik,” she’d scowled from the kitchen doorway. “All the organic blueberries and quinoa in the world can’t make up for the cancer juice you’re sucking down right now, you know.”

He threw her a venomous glare and muttered something about her not actually having been invited her over under his breath, which she chose to ignore. He’d tensed when she’d pulled open the sliding glass door, seeming unhappy to see her for the first time since before Christmas.

His words the night of New Year’s Eve came back to her as he ignored her scathing commentary on his chosen methods of  _ dealing _ , when he’d admitted to shivering in the cold on his patio, chain smoking as he listened to her sing. She knew it wasn’t a vice he normally indulged in, seemingly only under extreme duress.  _ Extreme duress involving you, stupid _ . The hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette trembled lightly at this side, and Christine let out a slow breath through her teeth, deciding to change tactics.

A small brown moth fluttered past her head as she stepped outside, taking him in appraisingly. The glow of the kitchen light sent long shadows up the flagstones, outlining Erik in his worn, slim cut jeans that emphasized his long legs, and a tissue paper-thin ringer tea that showed off his toned, lean arms. He let out a rattling exhalation, a plume of smoke blowing through his lips as he paced the short length of the stones. 

The lettering on the light blue shirt,  _ Folsom Prison Blues _ she made out in the dim shadows, was cracked and faded from repeated washings. His glasses sat slightly crooked on his face, and the light from the kitchen window glinted off the side of the shiny black frames.

“God, you’re so cute,” Christine murmured before she could stop herself as she blocked his path, leaning up on her toes to kiss his neck.

Her lips met empty air and she faltered, steadying herself quickly on the edge of the wrought iron cafe table before she stumbled. His eyes, when she met them once more, a full foot away from where they’d been just seconds earlier, were full of the same wounded hurt that they’d been that first night at his door, when she’d returned the cat.

“You don’t believe me.” A choked laugh made it past her lips as she shook her head in amazement. “Do you honestly not see how attracted I am to you, Erik?”

His shoulder was raised up to his ear, a telltale sign that it was tight and giving him pain, she thought as he turned away, breaking the eye contact she’d been holding.

“I can almost convince myself when we’re alone together, Christine, but please don't patronize me.” 

His words twisted her heart and made her stomach clench.  _ It's his issue to work out, not yours. All you can do is show him... _ He didn’t pull away when she pressed her cheek to his back, wrapping her arms around his wait to find his hand. She was able to feel his jackrabbit pulse beneath the thin skin at his wrist, the shakiness in his fingers as she wove them with her own.

“All of your friends will be there, everyone you know.”

When she gently traced over his bony knuckles with the tip of her nail, Erik shivered. Pulling out of her arms, he turned, crushing her to his chest.

“I told you it’s okay if you don’t want to come, Erik. I won’t be angry. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do something that you don’t want--”

“I do,” he interrupted her, pinning her against him. “I want to be there to support you if you want me there, I do...but I don’t want you to be…” his voice trailed off and Christine felt a stone settle in her stomach and she heard his throat bob with his hard swallow. “All of your friends are going to be there…”

Guilt was a bitter taste on the back of her tongue as she remembered her thoughts that day back after New Years. He was worried about embarrassing her, of her being embarrassed by  _ him _ , while she had been more worried about embarrassing herself for the past week. 

“That’s silly,” she murmured against his skin. “You’re successful, you have your life together. You run marathons for God’s sake. I already told you, if my friends have any issues, that just means they’re not very good friends. Meg is the only one I care about anyways, and she loves you.”

“But your ex-husband was--”

“My ex for a reason,” she cut in, pushing off his chest to look up at him then. Raoul’s golden, attaboy handsomeness was  _ not _ what he should be comparing himself to.  “Cheated on me, left me. Is actively allowing his dragon lady mother to terminate my alimony, right now, as we speak. If anyone wants to compare you to him and doesn’t remember that, again, not very good friends.”

Erik was quiet then, and she sighed tiredly, hoping he accepted her words.  _ You make me feel special and confident and I love you. I love your laugh, I love you sense of humor and your kindness and your passion. I love  _ **_you_ ** _. _ She didn’t know why it was so easy to say in her head, why she was unable to force her mouth to form the words.

“I wish--I wish I had known you before--”

“Well I don’t,” she cut him off sharply.  _ Of all the nights to have this conversation, to have this rear its ugly head. _ “I don’t know who that man was. I don’t know if I would have liked him.” Christine held his eye once more when he stepped back to look down on her. “That man was handsome, I can tell, but that doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ll bet he was arrogant. Entirely too pleased with himself, handsome and smart and successful. I would still be a broken little nothing, and he would have never noticed me.”

“Don’t.” His deep, resonant voice was a metallic rasp as he gripped her arm, tugging her gently back to him. “Don’t  _ ever _ call yourself nothing.” 

She remembered thinking once that they were destined to go back and forth taking care of each other, as she felt his fingers move lightly over her back. Fisting a hand in his thin shirt, she buried her face against him, not sure who was taking care of whom in that moment. 

Warm and spicy and familiar; he smelled like home to her. Despite the fact that she was making an extreme effort to make her recovery be about reclaiming her life--it was not about him or for him--Christine found herself increasingly unable to contemplate her world without him in it, without his smile and his humor. Erik’s head had lowered and she felt him breathe into her hair.

“You’re everything, Christine.” 

The words she wanted to say, the things she knew she felt, that she knew he needed to hear were there, dancing on the tip of her tongue as they had been for weeks, but Christine was unable to call them forth.  _ Not now, not like this. _

Silence enveloped them in the twilight as they stood leaning against each other as for what felt like a small eternity before she spoke again.

“C’mon in,” she murmured gently instead. She couldn’t say  _ it _ yet, but she could show him, could take care of him the way he always took care of her. “Put that out and come in. Hot shower. Let me rub your shoulder, you keep pulling it up.”

Later, when she settled against his chest, the comforter tucked around her, his heart still thumped erratically beneath her ear. He wouldn’t sleep that night, she knew, would be a nervous wreck in her absence the following day, and cool aloofness would be his shell tomorrow night. At that moment though, he was warm and his arms were secure around her. Christine pressed her lips to the center of his chest and mouthed the words she still couldn’t bring herself to say.

_ I love you. I love you. I love you.  _

.

.

They’d been worried for nothing.

When the wedding party entered the hall to the bombastic strains of  _ Ain’t That a Kick in the Head _ , the breath she’d been holding came out in a laughing rush when she saw him hugging the wall behind the table as people crowded and cheered when Meg and Will came dancing into the room. 

When Meg’s mother made the rounds to their table with gritted teeth after exchanging words with Will’s mother, Christine was being posed with the rest of the bridal party in front of the cake. She watched from several yards away as Mrs. Giry’s face lit up after introductions were made, felt her own tight smile widen as Erik said something that made the older woman let out a bawdy laugh, glance back to the mother of the groom, and laugh again, laying a warm hand on Erik’s shoulder. When she passed on the opposite end of the dance floor, Mrs. Giry caught Christine’s eye with a bright smile and gave her a not-at-all subtle thumbs up. 

When the bridal party returned to the long table before dinner was served, the groomsman who Christine was certain wouldn’t know Erik immediately proved her wrong, nearly turned himself inside out in excitement, and demanded that seats be shuffled so that he could pick Erik’s brain the rest of the night. 

Christine overheard the young man bickering with his date an hour or so later, after she’d skirted around the edge of the large dance floor, and made her way to the bar.

“You don’t understand,” she overheard the younger man snapping at his girlfriend, while she waited for her drink. “He’s like a fucking cryptid in my office. He designed the Tanjong Pearl and it’s absolute poetry in stone and glass. And no one’s ever met him!”

Christine felt her stomach curl and swoop at the younger man’s words. His girlfriend was saying something in response, muttering sullenly in a low enough voice that she was unable to hear, but was able to guess the topic when the groomsman snapped back. 

“Yeah, and that’s why we don’t have any accounts in active war zones, because of him. Everyone else on that site was killed, I heard. So excuse me if I don’t think doing the fucking chicken dance with you is more important than making a connection with a senior partner in an international firm. That’s my career, Steph.”

“Psst,” she whispered when she came back to the table, giving his bad shoulder a squeeze.

They’d left the table together to find the restrooms, had been stopped by the bride and groom once they’d reentered the room together, where Jammes was treated to the sight of Meg throwing her arms around a stunned Erik, exclaiming how glad she was that he’d come, introducing him to Will with a brilliant smile. When Christine had left for the bar, the two men had been in easy conversation. 

“You’re a Bigfoot. Or maybe a chupacabra? Whichever one is sexier.” She giggled at his narrowed eyes, leaning in conspiratorially. “That Ryan guy told his girlfriend you’re like a cryptid, everyone knows your name but no one’s met you. Why didn’t you ever tell me you’re a partner at your firm?”

“Did you think I worked in the mail room?”

Christine scowled, gasping in mock offense when he took a long swallow from her fresh drink. The mask was still unsettling to her, now that she knew how expressive the ruined face beneath truly was. Still, she thought, as his fingertips brushed a wayward curl from her neck, his lovely eyes were still bright, crinkled with his smile.

“You look so beautiful.” His voice was a mellifluous purr at her ear, his hand seeking hers beneath the table as the exuberant groomsman returned to his seat. The young man’s voice was white noise as Erik caressed the center of her palm, tracing the edge of her wrist before hooking their pinkies. Christine wasn’t sure if the thumping heartbeat she felt then was his or her own.

“Why don’t you call my assistant and set something up,” Erik finally told the younger man. “I keep regular office hours on Wednesdays, you can make an appointment for then.”

“I didn’t know you had an assistant,” Christine grumbled as the man’s disgruntled girlfriend was finally placated with a dance, the overzealous groomsman having secured what he’d been angling for. “Is she pretty?” She twisted up to see Erik’s malevolent smile. “You gave him Nadir’s number, didn’t you?”

“I gave him Nadir’s number,” he confirmed with a chuckle, and Christine found that she didn’t care who was watching or what they might have thought when she leaned up to kiss him.

  
  



	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry this update has taken a million years, but real life has been *extremely* real as of late. As a result, I simply don't have the time or energy to edit down the 17k word behemoth final chapter, so ya'll are getting it in two installments. Thanks to anyone still reading!

"You're going to be fine, princess. There's nothing to worry about."

Christine nodded stiffly, her stomach in knots. With every mile put between the house she'd grown up in and her father's car, her anxiety grew. Once she was back in her dorm and settled into the routine of her classes, she knew she would be fine, but that knowledge never kept the gut-twisting nerves at bay whenever she'd return to school from seasonal breaks.

That year, her third year in undergrad, returning to school after being home for her summer break was unusually difficult.

It made no sense. She was returning to her best friend and the other girls in their quad, was returning to her boyfriend. She'd first run into Raoul at a frat party off campus the previous year, shocked that the little boy she'd played with at the beach was the handsome, golden young man playing beer pong. They'd been dating since, but that hadn't prevented her from feeling a perplexing sense of relief when they'd been parted for the majority of the summer.

Now she was going back: back to her friends and boyfriend, parties and social obligations, and the suffocation she occasionally felt from all of the above. With every passing mile, all she wanted to do was beg her father to turn the car around and bring her home, to finish her degree at the community college where he taught. Christine loved school, loved her classes and the thrill of performing with the opera studio and the university's concert choir...it was everything else she could easily pass on.

"Daddy?" She glanced away from her window to where her father sat behind the wheel, paying attention to the rainy conditions on the highway as they sped along. "Will you be able to come see me in the spring concert? I have a solo."

"Of course I will! I wouldn't miss it for the world. You've been working so hard, princess."

She  _had_  been working hard. She was singing  _Come Unto Him_  for the symphony's Easter concert, a deceptively simple sounding air, despite the amount of control and delicate tessitura needed. Erik had been working with her nearly every evening. The consistent practice regiment was paying off, and her voice felt as strong as it'd been at the height of her collegiate career, in grad school.

Christine blinked in confusion. The rhythmic squeak of the windshield wipers provided the backdrop to her befuddlement as she tried to make sence of her own thoughts.

She was on her way back to school, back to undergrad where Meg and Raoul and the rest of their friends were, where she would soon be struggling through advanced theory…

...Yet she could easily hear Erik's flawless accompaniment, the notes flowing like water from his skilled hands as she stood in the curve of his big concert grand; the warmth and happiness she felt when making music with him, a sharp departure from the clawing anxiety of only a few moments ago. She could practically feel those same hands gripping her hips and playing with her hair, never demanding more from her than she was willing to give.

"Princess, are you asleep?"

She started at  _his_  voice, turning her head sharply. Her father's eyes were still fixed on the road, although he'd begun to sing softly.

_There's a train leaving nightly called_

_"When all is said and done"_

_Keep me in your heart for a while_

His fingers were a gentle pressure at her ribs, not quite tickling her, but not quite  _not,_  either. His voice - a rich, rolling purr - whispered at her ear.

"Christine? Are you awake?"

"You're going to be fine, princess," her father said once more. "Whenever you want to talk, Christine...I'm always here."

Her eyes fluttered open.

"Erik?" she murmured blearily, feeling his fingers drag from her ribs to the top of her thigh. "What's wrong?"

Starburst eyes blinked innocently back as she reached blindly for her phone on the side table. Christine twisted to see the display on the handset as graceful fingertips caressed her thighs.

_Just a hair after three a.m._  He was probably just coming to bed for the night, which he normally did soundlessly. She was able to smell the heavy cream he used on his scarred skin, smelled the toothpaste on his breath, and couldn't understand why he'd woken her.

"It's the middle of the night?"

The low hum of the air conditioner drowned out the chorus of crickets she might have been able to hear through the open window if she'd been in her own bed. Otherwise, the house, like the man in the bed next to her, was silent. The feather-light whisper of his stroking fingers made her squirm, and Christine squinted at his overly innocent look. He was  _never_  that innocent, she realized, narrowing her eyes.

"Did-did you just wake me up at three o'clock in the morning because you want to have sex?"

Erik made a strangled noise of offense, but his neck flushed pink in the moonlight. Christine snorted at his half-hearted denial, feeling the evidence of her accusation pressed hotly against her side as she shifted to face him fully. "You're incorrigible."

"I wouldn't  _do_  that, Christine," he huffed, slipping an arm around her as she rolled against him, nose-to-nose. "I just didn't know if you were awake...consent is sexy, you know."

"Oh, you thought maybe I was awake in the middle of the night despite the fact that I was snoring into my pillow, huh?"

They were close enough that his features were indistinct, his breath warm against her. Christine found herself moving closer, the slight space between them tightening until it vanished altogether and she bumped his melted nose with her own.

It had been that way from the beginning, she'd often reflected - since the day she'd returned the cat and he'd leaned down to her, drawing together like magnets.

He continued to laughingly make excuses that he wasn't sure if she was sleeping, his voice cutting off on a hiss when she finally slid her hand down to grip the hardness that had been pressed between their bodies. The thrill of desire that quivered through her at the sound of his deep groan made her breath catch as she stroked him slowly.

Lean, strong arms rolled her to her back, forcing her to lose her grip on his hardened length. Christine couldn't quite remember what she'd been dreaming of before he'd woken her, but the confusing anxiety she'd felt before Erik had whispered her name seemed like a distant memory as she arched against the fingers he slipped between her legs.

Gentle and light, circling methodically: he'd learned to play her body with the same finesse he wielded when seated at his piano.

Sharp teeth nipped at her throat, quickly followed by a soft kiss to her pulse point, his fingers never slowing against her. Thin lips curved into a satisfied smile against her skin when she moaned in response to his attentions.

"I'm sorry for waking you, Princess," he whispered, a sibilant curl, full of false contriteness. His lips teased at the shell of her ear and she shivered. "You can go back to sleep, we don't need to do anything."

The fingers he stilled then were coated in her wetness, and she knew he could feel her rocking into his hand. She glared at his innocent smile.  _Such_   _an_   _asshole_.

"You know you're very cute when you're full of shit. You're just gonna have to make it up to me...I'll think of something good."

When at last he settled atop her, his arousal pulsing against hers, Christine reached out for his scarred, misshapen face.

The unfathomable emotion she saw in his eyes made her stomach clench and curl as he held her blue eyes with his multi-colored ones.

"I'll give you the stars right from the sky, lovely girl," he murmured as she drew his lips to hers, liquified by the molten heat in his kiss. The look was still there when their mouths parted, the weighted moment finally broken when her head dropped back as he slid into her slowly.

Afterwards, his steady heartbeat thumped beneath her ear where she rested against him. He'd fallen asleep almost immediately, she noted ruefully, smiling against his warmth.

The cat slinked into the room and hopped on the bed lightly, and Christine thought Bibi appeared to wrinkle her small, pink nose in disgust.

_Mating again?!_ the narrowed green eyes seemed to ask derisively.

The thought of Habibti waiting impatiently in the hallway while they had sex - pacing and checking a tiny watch as the silence of the house was broken by the rhythmic bounce of the mattress, her high, gasping cries and Erik's deep, throaty groans - made her snort in sleepy laughter.

"Don't blame me," she whispered as Bibi snuggled into her blanket, stretching her legs and infringing on Erik's pillow in the process. "This was daddy's fault."

She'd seen that look before, Christine mused, thinking of his eyes as her own grew heavier. It had never failed to make her heart climb into her throat, made her thrum with breathless excitement. Unlike so many of his other looks and gestures, though, she didn't know what this one meant. Erik's arm was a heavy weight across her as sleep pushed her thoughts away for the night.  _Tomorrow. You can think about it tomorrow..._ Her eyes slipped shut to the steady tattoo of his heart, lulling her back to sleep with a smile on her face.

.

.

Christine hadn't thought she'd do especially well at the small program, a feeder group for the nearest University, run out of a Montessori school. When she'd emailed the address on the flyer she'd picked up outside of the symphony choir's rehearsal space, she wasn't entirely sure what she was expecting for an outcome.

"I don't know what I was thinking! I don't know how to teach voice," she'd fretted as she paced the long length of Erik's living room, the night before she began her new position. The two interviews had been laughably easy, which made her worry that she was faking her way into another position for which she was unqualified, despite Erik's insistence that it felt easy because she fit in well with the program and would do well.

He never looked up from his piano as she panicked, but as she turned, Christine caught him rolling his eyes dramatically. The Chopin Polonaise he played was a grandiose counterpoint to her angst, and she stamped her foot at his nonchalance.

Sighing heavily, he stopped playing abruptly. "Christine, you're being-"

"I swear to God, if you tell me I'm being ridiculous I'm going to-"

Her interruption was interrupted in turn when he reached out a long arm as she passed, tugging her to the piano bench.

"You're being unnecessarily negative about yourself for no reason, lovely girl," he murmured against her neck. "You have degrees in vocal performance and in music education. They're middle schoolers. Do you really think they're going to question your pedagogical knowledge? Or are they going to whine about wanting to sing something from  _The Little Mermaid_  instead of  _Caro mio ben_?"

Christine slumped against him, laughingly admitting that he was right after sucking in a deep, steadying breath.

She'd been working through the "dysfunctional assumptions" section of her CBT workbook for what felt like ages, and was confident that she  _was_  getting better at redirecting her thoughts before the insidious little voice in her head gained traction, but anxiety's foothold in her self conscious was deep.

" _Caro mio ben_  is my favorite of the Twenty Six Hits, you know," she mumbled after he kissed her lightly, prompting him to immediately segue into the opening as she seated herself beside him and prepared to sing.

_Senza di te, languisce il cor_

She allowed herself to be folded into his arms and kissed soundly once the last notes faded, thinking that her heart too would languish without him.

The look was there when she pulled away.

Christine felt her stomach fold in on itself, felt the butterflies collectively hold their breath, and hers alongside as she stared up to his piercing, weighted gaze. His lovely starburst eyes held hers until she was certain every bit of air had been sucked from the room.

"What?" she asked breathlessly with the last bit of oxygen she possessed.

"You know what." He bent to brush his lips lightly at her temple, breaking the look, and instantly the blood came rushing back, thundering in her ears and she could breathe once more.

"Do I?"

One of his indifferent little shrugs as he turned back to the piano keys, his fingers easily sliding into the opening of another one of the well-known airs.  _Tu lo sai_  this time, and she swallowed around a lump as she considered the lyrics.

_Tu lo sai, quanto t'amai_

"Maybe you don't."

.

.

The three students assigned to her upon hiring, two middle school-aged girls and a sixteen year old boy, were as nervous as she was at their first respective lessons.

Despite the uncertain start, within a matter of weeks Christine found herself completely invested in the burgeoning middle-school musical careers of her girls, regaling Erik with their tales of sixth grade saboteurs and teacher favoritism over the dinners he'd have ready for her when she came home from lessons, four nights a week.

When the grey gloom of that rainy spring finally gave over to the blindingly bright summer, the Montessori program had enrollment for new students, and she had been requested by several families, schoolmates of Patrick, her high schooler. Five new students, steadily filling her afternoons and evenings, a time of day she'd previously have spent in her nest of blankets, wallowing in misery.

Now things were different.

Ms. Christine, as her students called her, didn't wear leggings and ratty old man cardigans from sunup til sundown. Her closet full of professional clothes-pastel sweaters and tailored skirts, patterned tights and strappy sandals, wrap dresses and colorful scarves-was suddenly back in business.

Time, which had previously been tracked by school vacations and standardized test schedules; by events at Raoul's parent's club and and evenings spent fake smiling her way through dinners, then by doctor's appointments and treatments, in good days when the pain wasn't so bad and her father had been able to crack a smile and have a real conversation with her, was now a blur of activity and busyness.

After her father's death, after her divorce, time had ceased to matter. One day bled into the next, with little to look forward to or be excited about. These days, a little heart on the calendar for every good day was how she kept track of her schedule and her progress. They weren't all good days, not by a long shot, but the good days outnumbered the bad, and she was able to see in real time the way she was turning the tide.

Christine gazed at the square at the bottom corner of the calendar, a reminder that the first of the new month, in just a few days, would fall on a Saturday. She knew if she flipped the page, she'd find  _Sonja brunch / Date Night!_  written in the little square.

_Maybe this will be the month you actually tell him_ , she thought to herself, mentally counting.  _Six months and you still can't say it. What the hell is wrong with you?_

Pushing the thought away, she retrieved a covered bowl from her refrigerator before locking the back door and returning to Erik's house.  _This month you'll tell him, this month you'll be brave_. She fervently hoped, as she let herself into the house next door, the sound of the piano greeting her, that the little voice knew what it was talking about.

.

.

"I don't know what to tell my parents, I don't know what to tell people at work...how am I supposed to break it to the kids?"

Christine swirled her cocktail straw against the edge of her glass, wincing as Sonja's voice wavered. Her gaze was resolutely trained on the pink sugar that rimmed the glass.

The Salon was a glamorous brunch spot, all sleek mirrors and soft peach linens. The silent servers glided around the hushed dining room, keeping the carafes of chilled grapefruit juice filled and the champagne flowing.

Sonja'd had her baby shower here as well, she remembered, and Christine idly wondered if it was going to be the setting for all of her university friend's big life moments. She was trying not to focus on the fact that her friends hadn't taken  _her_  to a fancy lunch when her husband had left.

"Have you guys tried therapy?" Meg asked, taking a sip from her own glass.

Jammes' nose wrinkle slightly at the suggestion as Sonja shook her head. "Spence won't do it. He said that's like waving a wand, hoping everything will just magically be better."

Christine's grip on the straw tightened simultaneously with her stomach at Sonja's words.

If Erik hadn't been willing to go back to therapy, to be brave, she wouldn't have his stars at her throat, intermingled with her own, she thought. If  _she_  hadn't been brave enough to take that first step for herself, she might still be stuck, watching the Hallmark channel in her pajamas, letting life pass her.

Her fingers drifted to the delicate chain at her neck, ghosting over the winking diamonds as Jammes murmured some trite nonsense about  _investment levels_  and trying a couples vacation without the kids in tow.

"If he's not willing to try counseling he's more invested in being an asshole than he is in being your husband. He's showing you his investment level."

Jammes' head snapped up, and Sonja's eyes widened slightly at Christine's blurted words, but the latter gave a small nod. She noticed that Meg was suddenly  _extremely_  interested in looking at the ceiling, biting the corner of her twitching lip.

"I guess so...did you go to therapy with Raoul?" Sonja asked after a moment.

"Not with Raoul. And it's not a magic wand. It's a lot of hard work, you have to be willing to put  _in_  work...but it's worth it."

The necklace had been for her birthday. Her birth sign constellation, rendered in delicate gold and platinum, diamonds standing in for the stars.

"It probably won't make a bit of difference if I tell you this is too much, right?"

"Not in the slightest," he'd answered breezily, moving behind her as she gathered up her hair. Erik had pressed his thin lips gently behind her ear as the necklace was fastened, and her breath had caught, butterflies in a riot of delight.

"Well in that case, I love it."

He'd made a great fanfare of serving her fruitcake from Christmas, studded with glowing birthday candles; had nearly choked on his first bite, not expecting it be as boozy as it was, and she'd almost passed out from laughing so hard. It had been the best birthday she'd had in years.

Impossible to consider such a thing just a few months prior, when she was adrift.

Two months after her own birthday, she'd had the necklace altered, adding the Taurus constellation to her Pisces stars. Erik wasn't a man who needed anything, and quickly bought himself anything he might want, Christine had learned. She thought he'd appreciate seeing their stars together for his birthday, more than some frivolous little tchotchy.

The necklace and the new lingerie she'd worn - which had indeed been appreciated, with wide eyes and reverent fingers gliding over the sheer, blush-colored lace - had been more than enough.

The conversation was interrupted by Sorelli, who swanned into the dining room still looking as glamorous as she had in back in school, all swingy dark hair, flashing bangles, and skyscraper heels. She'd been absent for Meg's wedding festivities, having been overseas with her ballet company at the time. Christine was unsurprised when Sorelli's sparkling dark eyes had eventually fixed on her, after the appropriate amount of cooing over poor Sonja was out of the way.

"I hear you've got a new man, Chrissy. Meg said he's a tall drink of water. Did he buy you that sparkler?"

She took a measure sip of her drink before answering with a small smile. She had learned over the past several months, aside from the occasional exception, if Erik's face wasn't made an issue, it ceased to become one.

It wasn't always the case, of course. She'd seen firsthand what he'd meant, after all; understood his bitter  _God_   _forbid_   _they_   _make_   _eye_   _contact_ comment. People didn't  _see_  him, they actively chose not to look. She'd come to understand, after nearly six months together, how he'd become a ghost.

"What would happen if you didn't mention his injury?" Diane had asked her during a session earlier that spring. "Do you think people would question it on their own? It's often our reactions that give others permission to behave a certain way, to behave badly...what will happen if someone  _does_  mention it? How do you want to react in that situation?"

They'd been discussing Christine's nerves over Meg's wedding at that point, but she'd tried hard to internalize the conversation. She knew she didn't need to mention his face because it  _didn't_  matter, and in the event that it did, well... she'd discovered it was easy to make those people not matter either, at least as far as she was concerned.

"I do, he is, and he did," she answered lightly, and Sorelli just laughed that big Sorelli laugh, and that was that.

Six months of date nights, she thought as Sonja's voice buzzed; six months of dancing and sushi bars and the theater; of grocery shopping and trips to the hardware store and runs in the park on Sundays. With her at his side, the ghost had become a man once more: a bossy, opinionated, hilariously sarcastic man; with him at hers, the apathetic zombie she'd become had been shed for a life full of  _living_.

_Six months of loving him without admitting it_.  _Still a silly bitch, Christine._  The pessimistic voice piped up as she allowed her thoughts to drift, not needing to listen as the story behind Spencer's departure was rehashed for Sorelli and the champagne glasses topped off once more.

There had been a moment the night before, after she'd rubbed his chest and spoken in a soft, soothing voice as he jerked and trembled in the grips of a nightmare; after he'd rolled onto his side seeking her arms, but before he'd snored softly against her skin, when her cowardice had nearly suffocated her.

She had wondered, back when she was still spying on him through the window, if he had nightmares of his accident and the endless months of pain and hospitalization afterwards. During their "taking it slow" stage, when she spent only one or two nights a week in his bed, she'd never witnessed anything of the sort.

Once they'd begun to spend nearly every night together, however, Christine quickly realized her initial suppositions were accurate.

As Erik had pressed his ruined face to her breast the night before, once he ceased to thrash and shake, she'd heard her name mumbled against her skin, said like a soft prayer in his sleep.

The ability to breathe was not something she thought of often, under normal circumstances. In that moment though, her lungs had felt squeezed, pressed by her own cowardice, unable to suck in any air at all.

She had done her own research, months earlier, when her curiosity could not be satisfied by his little shrugs and  _mhms_  and general vagueness, and had spent several days sobbing as payment for her burning need to know.

PTSD and nightmares, medically categorized burn thickness, the subcutaneous damage of extensive third degree burns and the resulting lack of sensation...Christine had memorized it all.

_He can barely feel it when you kiss him_ , she'd thought as she'd curled into the corner of her treacherous sofa that afternoon, thinking of the hundreds of soft kisses she'd pressed to his bad shoulder, his burned chest and neck and head. The endless pictures she'd looked at of charred bodies pulled from bombing sights made her sick, made her realize how very close to death he'd probably been, how alone and afraid and in pain, and selfishly, how different her own life would be if he hadn't survived to be her neighbor.

All things he didn't like to speak of, but things she'd needed to know regardless. Her internet browser was meticulously cleared after each rabbit hole was explored, and if she'd clung to him tightly those nights, well...she told herself she was simply better equipped to be a good partner to this prickly, complex man she loved.

_You know you love him, you love him more than you've ever loved anyone. Why can't you say it? Why can't you tell him? What's wrong with you?_

Heat had flooded her face and the tears that had pricked her eyes burned as he murmured her name, never fully waking. "Erik, I'm right here," she'd whispered, her voice hitching as he pressed his ruined face to her skin.

Seeking his hand where it rested under the covers, she'd gently traced over his slim wrist and bony knuckles, feeling his pulse throb in his fingertips, strong and steady, fighting back a sob before she hooked their pinkies.

His breath had already evened out against her when she'd lowered her lips to his scarred head and whispered the thing she couldn't say when he was awake.

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

Ice clinked against the sides of the water goblet in front of her as the server refilled it, startling her from her reverie.  _We're not thinking about that today_ , she told herself firmly, shaking herself out of her thoughts and refocusing on Sorelli and Sonja.

The truth was she didn't  _know_  why she couldn't bring herself to say those words, still. She knew they were true, had known for months. Erik was true to his word and would never pressure her, but Christine couldn't shake the feeling that she was doing him a mighty disservice by not being able to verbalize what she felt for him.

"He's rubbing off on you, you know," Meg laughed once they were back in the car. After she'd hugged Sonja, Christine had given Jammes a tight goodbye with a cold smile, thinking about the phone call.

.

.

Raoul had called several days after Meg's wedding. His pretext had been paper thin from the start, and he hadn't been able to help himself from blurting out his true reason for calling after just a few moments of stilted small talk on his part. She'd been telling him in a tight voice that he could direct anything he needed to say to Herb when he interrupted her.

"I hear you're seeing someone."

Christine paused, sucking in a breath.  _Jammes_. She wasn't sure why she was surprised, she knew Jammes would ensure Raoul heard about her bringing a date to Meg's wedding.

The  _someone_  in question had been in her basement replacing a length of old, leaky galvanized pipe, as she stood in her kitchen with the phone.

When he'd walked through the house with her, shortly after the holidays, Erik had generously offered to drop a match, saving her from the endless amount of work that fixing up the aging house she'd inherited from Mamma V required. He'd only laughed when she'd shoved him, and had since insisted they could do some of the work themselves, insisting that she needed to learn.

"I absolutely trust your ability to design houses, but fixing them is completely different," she'd fretted at the time, staring up a the sagging gutter he'd pointed out. Erik had been unfazed, kissing her lightly on the nose as she worried her lower lip with her teeth.

"Maybe you've forgotten, Princess, but  _I'm_  a grownup. I know how to do plenty of things. And if it's something I don't...well, that's what Youtube is for.  _And_  you need to learn."

"Yes, I am," she'd told Raoul flatly. Jammes was predictable, if nothing else. Christine had wondered what exactly she'd told Raoul about Erik, if she'd mentioned the mask, what she'd said about the two of them together. Then she'd remembered kissing Erik at Meg's wedding, dancing with him until she was dizzy, the way he'd dropped her with a bounce onto the bed in the hotel room he'd booked unbeknownst to her, after he'd unzipped her out of her bridesmaid dress as she laughed.  _Who cares what Raoul thinks._

"Oh. Um, that's...that's good. Is-is it serious?"

The telltale squeak of the ancient basement steps signified that  _someone_  was on his way back upstairs, would be entering the kitchen any moment now.

"Okay, I'm fairly confident we're only going to need to go back to the hardware store three more times today," Erik announced, appearing in the doorway.

The sight of him, in battered jeans and a slim grey t-shirt, glasses on his face, shaking the box of washers and o-rings she'd insisted was the right size, made her mouth stretch on its own volition, the butterflies fluttering happily. The phone was forgotten for a moment when he crossed to her, her nails scraping over his taut stomach when he bent to kiss her. The fistful of his shirt she'd gripped prevented him from moving away.

"Very serious," she said into the phone as Erik cocked is head curiously. "And we're very busy. Goodbye."

.

.

"Christine, we need to get together for lunch soon! I want to hear all about how things are going," Jammes had simpered as cheeks were kissed and promises to call soon were made around the group.

Christine stepped back from Jammes' attempted hug, fixing her with a glacial smile as Sorelli and Meg looked on in amusement.

"I actually  _do_  want to hear everything," Sorelli had whispered when she'd hugged Christine fiercely a moment later, "but we won't invite any of these bitches. Ta, ladies!"

"What is that supposed to mean?" she laughed at Meg's words, buckling her seatbelt.

"It means telling Sonja that Spencer is an asshole is a page from the Erik playbook, and you can't tell me it's not...where's he taking you tonight?"

Christine flushed with a small smile. She supposed the fact that she'd been checking the time every few minutes for the last forty minutes, fidgeting in her seat had given her away.

.

.

Part of doing things "the right way" with her, as he'd stubbornly insisted, was taking her out on actual, real-life dates a few times a month, something she absolutely hadn't expected to experience with him.

_Ms. Daaé are you by chance free this evening?_

_If so, perhaps you'd like to have dinner with me?_

He'd texted her several hours after he'd left her bed one morning to return to his own house, a few weeks after Meg's wedding. She'd had lessons that afternoon, but would be home by seven, as he well knew.

_As it so happens, I AM free this evening_

_:)_

_My place or yours?_

He'd ignored her question, texting back that he'd pick her up at eight and to wear something "swingy."

Christine had laughed and then promptly put it out of her mind, chalking it up to his quirky sense of humor.

When he'd knocked on her door at eight sharp in a fitted suit the color of a midnight sky, a wrap of blood red roses in his hands, he'd scowled down at her. She'd never changed when she'd come home, and still wore the slim white capris and melon-hued twinset she'd slipped on for lessons that day.

The sight of his shiny black car in her driveway set her heart hammering in her throat.

"Fetching as you are, princess, that is not swingy."

She'd flown up the stairs, leaving him banging out Rachmaninoff on her barely-tuned upright. After some frantic digging, the depths of her closet yielded what she hoped was a  _swingy_  enough dress in a deep shade of flattering peacock blue. The back of the dress was formed by a lacy T, coming over her shoulders in a plunging neckline, flaring at her hips. It was the dress of a confident woman, which she was not, but Christine thought she could pretend to be one that night, pulling a pair of pewter-colored peep toes she'd bought at a vintage shop off the floor of her closet.

He  _was_  being brave, after all.

A swipe of ruby hued lipstick, and then she was flying back down the stairs, feeling a sense of déjà vu.  _This was how the night had started on New Years Eve_ , she remembered,  _and look at how that night ended_...

The Rachmaninoff had softened to Satie by the time she'd descended the staircase. As she'd fastened her earrings, tiny opal studs that had been her mother's, Christine watched his mouth open and close several times before rising with a hard swallow.

The dress had been a good choice.

Dinner had been at a dimly-lit trattoria, where all of the seating was intimate and the wine selection was plentiful. She had never been a fan of dark, dry reds previously, but the Brunello she'd tasted on his lips and tongue when he leaned down to her in their cozy booth was the sweetest vintage she'd thought existed.

The butterflies had been trembling with adrenaline when they'd left the restaurant, excited to get back in the sleek black car and go back to his house, but when they'd reached the small parking lot, Erik had tugged her past.

The unadorned, grey metal door he stopped in front of gave no indication to what lay inside it, but Christine could hear the music, brassy horns and thumping drums.

His hand had been a firm presence at her lower back as he'd tugged the door open and guided her over the threshold. Instantly she was awash in sound and energy at the sight of a lively band, a noisy bar, and couples flashing and turning on the dance floor. She'd turned up to him, shocked and elated, to find his hesitant smile and uncertain eyes.

There had been a similar band at Meg's wedding, not nearly as good as the one playing that night, although Christine had loved it. Meg's instance on live music over a DJ was, she'd thought, an excellent choice.

"I don't want people being drunk and rowdy," Meg had sneered during a planning afternoon, earlier in the year. "If we give them an open bar and a DJ playing noisy club jams, they will be."

The band she and Will had chosen, specializing in big band and jazzy rat pack standards from the 40's and 50's, had been a crowd pleaser for the most part, even if Christine had noticed some dismayed looks from the younger guests. It was music she loved, the soundtrack of afternoons spent baking with Mamma V during her winter and summer breaks, and Erik had taken note of the way she'd swayed to the music in her chair. She'd raised shocked eyes to his when he'd leaned down to ask if she wanted to dance.

He was exceedingly graceful and light on his feet, and Christine realized after the second song that not only did he know how to dance very well, but if they stayed on the upper corner of the dance floor he'd steered her to, beyond the edge of the stage, they were largely invisible to the rest of the dance floor and beyond. She could enjoy time spent in his arms, they weren't being gawked at, and she was spared the non-stop stream of "old friends" who wanted to see how she was faring for close to an hour.

When they'd arrived at the hotel after the wedding, Christine had been filled with relieved euphoria, crowing that they'd  _done_   _it_  as he bounced her down on the bed, had thanked him for coming with her as he'd crawled over her on the mattress, whispered that dancing with him had been her favorite part of the night just before he'd kissed her.

That same feeling of lightness and exhilaration had suffused her as she'd looked up to his uncertain eyes in the middle of that noisy, innocuous little club, dragging him down by the collar to reassure him with her lips.

"Do you want to sit and listen? Or get something from the bar? Or…"

Christine had felt her smile stretch as she tugged his hand until they entered the fray of the dance floor, his hand moving to her back.

_Is it an earthquake or simply a shock?_

_Is it that good turtle soup or merely the mock?_

Erik's eyes had zeroed in on her legs as he spun her, flaring out the skirt on her requested  _swingy_  dress. "You are very transparent, sir," she'd laughed, feeling breathless and light and alive.

If he'd told what he'd been planning, she would have been a nervous wreck the entire day, she knew. Anxious over what to wear, tense over how Erik would be treated, her nerves would have spoiled the evening. Instead, Christine had felt like she was flying, shocked by how much fun she'd had.

_Is it a fancy, not worth thinking of?_

_Or is it at long last love?_

The club had been crowded, and while they were on the dance floor she'd felt lost in his arms, cocooned in invisibility. The other couples who moved around them were too intent on their own dancing to pay any mind to the masked man in their midst. Once they took a break to move to the bar, however, she'd noticed several eyes slide over them. As their drinks were pushed across the polished mahogany bar surface, she'd watched an older man whisper something to the woman at his side, nodding discreetly in their direction.

_If they want to look, give them something to look at._  Gripping his collar once more, Christine rose up on her toes, pulling Erik's lips down to hers. The bourbon was sharp and smokey on his tongue, and his lovely eyes, which had been darting nervously only a moment early, were clouded with desire and something else; something more potent, that stole the air from her lungs and made her her skin prickle with excitement as she pulled back.

The older couple was still watching them, she saw when she lowered back to the floor, the woman with a knowing smile. As she threw back the rest of her drink, urging Erik to do the same so they could return to the dance floor, the older man raised his own glass to them, tossing an accented  _Salut_ down the bar.

_Like a river flows surely to the sea_

_Darling so it goes_

_Some things are meant to be_

The Sinatra-esque singer crooned and she'd sighed into the center of the ultrafine wool of Erik's perfectly tailored suit. Their height difference was probably comical, but Christine found that she didn't quite care; didn't care what people thought or who may have been been staring. Like his face - which she far preferred over the emotionless mask - it was thoroughly unimportant. He had a hand at her hip, the other caressing the back of her neck, and all she wanted to do was keep dancing in his arms forever.

She'd fallen asleep in the car that night, and he had carried her into her house, the same way he'd done on Christmas.

"Stay," she'd whispered when he'd crossed the threshold of her room, lowering her gently to the bed. Slipping out of her dress unsteadily, Christine shut the bedroom door decisively. Kicking off her panties had proven an even bigger challenge than the dress, the scrap of lace causing her to stumble with a giggle before she crossed the room to open the window for him.

Erik stripped his clothes slowly, tsking her as he carefully laid his suit over the back of the small chair near the door. Bending to retrieve her dress, he shook it out before laying it alongside his clothes.

"You know, lovely girl," he whispered against her shoulder after joining her beneath the cool sheets, "standing in front of your window naked is how you got yourself into this mess in the first place."

He needed to leave a spare pair of glasses at her house, she thought, so he wouldn't need to sleep in his contacts, which she knew he hated. The glasses could live on her nightstand alongside her own, the way his toothbrush rested against hers in the little frog-shaped porcelain cup in her bathroom down the hall.

She smiled at his words as she settled against him, her head finding the spot on his chest it seemed made to rest against, right over his steady heartbeat.

It had been a  _perfect_  day.

"Hmm...I could say the same to you, actually."

.

.

"I don't know what we're doing," she told Meg with a smile. "He never tells me. Just asks if I'm free for dinner."

"That's adorable. Maybe some night we could do something together, the four of us?"

Christine felt her cheeks heat as she nodded. "I think that would be fun, I'll tell him." Meg and Will and her and Erik. She was a part of a couple again.

That night they'd gone to the movies, a special screening of a Met Opera production, and she'd been bursting with opinions on everything from the costumes to the lead soprano's  _Sempre libera_. When he'd steered her away from the metered spots where they were parked, Christine thought nothing of it, used to being surprised at that point...when they stopped outside of a noisy, outdoor burger joint, however, she'd gaped in shock.

"You know," she told him around a mouthful of the greasy bacon cheeseburger he'd ordered for each of them, "this is the unhealthiest thing I've ever seen you do. Other than the stress smoking."

Eating one-handed was very slow, but he'd hooked their pinkies in the center of the table after their order had been called up, and Christine found she was unable to let him go. She traced a raised vein over the top his hand with the nail of her index finger, and in retaliation, he caressed her palm with his thumb.

"I have something important to ask you." Erik's deep, melodic baritone pitched a bit lower than normal, his starburst eyes serious behind the mask. She'd been going on about the Violetta in the opera, that she thought the Brindisi was too slow, and it was the first thing he'd said in several minutes.

"Yes?" A tremulous whisper, the barest flutter of wings felt beneath her breast. He'd had that unfathomable look in his eyes all evening, and her heart flipped as he gazed down on her. Christine realized she had no idea what he was going to ask her, only that she was going to be helpless to say yes, regardless.

"If I get more fries, will you have some?"


	14. Chapter 14

She woke to the sensation of a slight tugging at her scalp. 

Christine breathed deeply, eyes still closed, and pressed her nose into the side of his neck. Her toes slid through the cool sheets in search of his long legs, smiling when she found the warmth of his skin, making him flinch. The solid thump of Erik’s heartbeat reverberated against her lips. Another tug, and her eyes fluttered open. 

He’d wound a thick curl around each of his fingers and was pulling his hand back gently, letting the coils of hair bounce back to her scalp.

 “You have a hair fetish,” she whispered against him as the final curl released from his thumb. “You know that, right?”

Waking up with him was one of her most favorite things, on the rare occasion that it happened. Erik’s personality was spiky and guarded, a cool veneer of sarcasm that he armoured himself in, but in the mornings he was soft. Soft and vulnerable, and she appreciated that he allowed her to see him that way.

Christine pushed herself from his chest, rolling to her back and stretching as he chuckled. Sunlight streamed through the partially open shade, and through the closed window she was able to hear the ebullient chirping of their backyard birds. 

It was unusual for him to be awake before her, and Christine knew she didn't need to ask the reason. 

She was the first person who would admit that Erik had deplorable sleeping habits, habits she’d happily absorbed. She would rise around ten and make herself breakfast while indulging in terrible daytime television, ensuring his coffee was brewed by the time he staggered downstairs shortly before noon. 

Most afternoons, he would tug her hand to follow him into the shower or else back to bed -- occasionally both—before he started his work for the day. Christine wasn’t sure if he was merely glutting himself on her body after more than a decade of being starved for touch, but from her position in the center of the bed, gripping her pillow and crying out in bliss as he took her from behind in the middle of the afternoon, she’d decided she didn’t care.

Afterwards, it was her turn to slip off to get ready for work, kissing the back of his head as he settled in at his drafting table, before leaving to make herself presentable for the day's lessons.

“You should probably just pick me up tonight,” she murmured, stretching until she felt a small pop in her back. “It's silly to come home from school just to turn around and go back in the same direction.”

“That’s fine,” he conceded softly before rolling to lie against her once she’d settled back into her pillow, his head pillowed upon her breast. 

Christine wrapped her arms around him, skating her nails lightly down the back of his neck, sighing. She already knew that she'd accurately guessed the source of his anxiety. It would be the third time they’d met Meg and Will for dinner, and his stress over what was supposed to be light-hearted evenings out wasn’t any less on the third than it had been on the first.

 Christine knew his nerves had little to do with the concept of going out and socializing. If she’d been expecting life with him to be contained behind closed doors, with grocery delivery and laundry service and Amazon for everything in between, she would have been disappointed. They went out constantly. 

They still met for lunch in between their therapy appointments on Wednesdays at the little coffee shop across from the building where she’d get her nails done while she waited for him. 

 They grocery shopped on Thursday nights, after her last lesson—first at the high-end health store he preferred, where she would wrinkle her nose at the bottles of green cold-pressed juices and organic kale he loaded into their cart; followed by the big box grocery store was used to, where he kept up a running commentary on her frozen snacks and the questionable origin of her breakfast sausage. In addition to forcibly banning sugary drinks for the sake of her voice, he’d accused her of having the dietary habits of a ten year old boy the day she’d come over to find him in his basement gym, doing crunches while she perched on his rowing machine, eating a hot pocket, and had taken up a vigorous campaign to have her eat like a rabbit, like him.

 When mac and cheese had appeared in his freezer alongside his healthier fare, she’d stood in shock, a slow smile blooming on her face, the butterflies fluttering happily. It wasn’t the neon-orange, high sodium brand she normally bought. The organic label boasted something called a “rabbit seal of approval,” which had made her laugh, envisioning Erik as the long-eared rabbit pictured on the box carefully inspecting the white cheddar and gluten-free pasta in a pair of heavy-framed black glasses, but still—it was an effort she’d appreciated..

 They went to the park every Sunday, where she would run, red-faced and panting, beside him, oblivious if anyone gave them long looks. The restaurant they liked in Little Italy did live Opera on Mondays, and they frequented the little hardware store store around the corner so often, that the owners called out to them by name.

 None of that had lessened Erik’s anxiety over spending time with her friends, the same fears he’d had over attending Meg’s wedding, months prior, still holding sway. He worried about her being embarrassed by him, by his mask, worried over her friends, people who’d known the old Christine, whispering about her once they were gone. Since their first double date outing, he also worried that Meg and Will were embarrassed to be seen with someone who garnered the stares of strangers, and though she hadn’t  addressed it, Christine understood why. 

 She had taken note, the first time they’d met Meg and Will, as she and Erik entered the restaurant and were led to a high-backed booth on an empty side of the dining room, where their double date companions were already seated. 

 It had happened again the second time. 

 Christine had suggested the Cajun gastropub, a trendy spot in a newly gentrified neighborhood, thinking of how much fun she’d had when Erik had taken her there the previous month. She’d had her first taste of alligator, at his insistence, and had laughed until her eyes streamed when they’d vehemently argued over the names of Sesame Street Muppets during the bar trivia. When they’d come in second place, she’d still been laughing as he’d leaned down to kiss her.

 Her eyes had narrowed in confusion when Meg had brightly announced that they had a reservation to the hostess, had frowned when they were led away from the tables where the bar trivia game was played, in the center of the room, to a back booth on the opposite end of the dining room from the small stage. Erik had met her eyes in a hard stare as they were seated, his thin lips pressed in a flat, unmoving line.

 “Hey guys!” the cheerful server, the same they’d had on their last visit, had exclaimed as she brought over menus. “Not playing tonight? You were so close last time!”

 “No, I guess not,” Christine had answered tightly, swallowing back her disappointment over the direction the evening had taken. _It didn’t matter_ . She didn’t need to _let_ it matter. She’d sought Erik’s hand under the table, hooking their pinkies as she smiled up at the girl. “I don’t even need a menu—I’m going to have the alligator étouffée.” 

As on the first night, once the awkwardness of being hidden in the corner had passed, Meg had filled the space with her bright chatter, asking after Christine’s new job and filling her in on gossip from their group. Will was always full of funny stories about the early days of dating Meg, and Christine had been happy to share the success she was having at the symphony, and how nervous she was about her upcoming opera audition.

Erik had been polite and quiet, as he always was, gripping her hand tightly beneath the table at regular intervals, and had breathed a dramatic sigh of relief once they were back in the car. The fact that he’d had no problem stopping at the crowded frozen custard stand on the way home, after she pointed out the window and squealed, was not lost on her.  

When Meg had mentioned that Will had heard good things about a Moroccan restaurant across town, Christine had jumped on the opportunity to gain the upper hand for their third double date. 

“Oh,” he’d said with a frown from where he sat on the floor, a series of intricate looking  brick designs spread out around him when she’d mentioned the restaurant after reading the text from Meg, before giving her one of his non-committal one-shouldered shrugs. “That’s fine. I’ve been there, the food’s very good.”

“If it’s fine then why are you making that face? We don’t have to say yes just because they suggested it, if you’d rather not go there we can think of something else.”

“It _is_ fine.” Erik rolled her eyes as she scowled at him across the kitchen. “It’s a nice place, you’ll like it.” He hesitated, and Christine raised an eyebrow in wait.  “I-I was going to take you there. They have belly dancing on Fridays.”

“Belly dancing?!” she’d gasped, whirling away from the counter to face him once more. She knew that the shimmy she performed across the room was probably ridiculous, but he’d had that wide smile on his face, his starburst eyes sparkling, when she’d arrived in front of him still twisting her hips. “I think my ass is too flat for this.”

His giant hands spanned the width of her hips as he’d grasped them, and she’d squeaked when he’d pulled her down to the floor, landing awkwardly in his lap.

“Your ass is perfect,” he’d purred against her neck as she giggled. “It’s your technique that needs work. We can _practice_ your moves later.”

Christine had raised her head to find Bibi glaring at them from her perch on the sofa, shaking her small, soft head in disgust before leaping to stalk off to the kitchen, imperiously reseating herself in front of the sliding glass door. 

_It’s not like we’re going to go at it right here on the floor_! she telepathically called to the cat, thinking belatedly that they’d actually done exactly that several times before.

“Well, there’s not a rule saying we can only go there once right? We can always go back, just the two of us.”

“Absolutely,” he’d agreed as she struggled to her feet. Rising gracefully behind her, Erik bent to retrieve the designs, avoiding her eyes as he continued. “I promise to take you back another time. We’ll need to anyways, our table is probably going to be in the back parking lot behind the dumpsters. You’re going to miss the whole show.”

She’d been upset, at first. 

She’d been upset with Meg, hurt at the way their evenings out together— _double dates she had asked for!_ Christine had fumed—had been playing out, but at length, her hurt had faded into exhaustion. 

“ _That’s a lot of added pressure to take on_ …” 

Meg’s words from that day in her kitchen after the winter holidays had come back to Christine, and she knew she couldn't be angry. After all, Meg hadn't made the commitment to not care about other people, _she_ had. Meg liked Erik, thought he was funny and appreciated his sarcasm, but she wasn’t yet inured to the weight of stares.

Christine thought back to a short conversation she’d had with Marilyn and Sal, the older couple from the little music club. On the third Tuesday of the month, the club hosted its rat pack night, and Christine had insisted that she and Erik attend each month, loving the carefree nights spent dancing in his arms to the music of her childhood. The older couple from the bar that first night were regular fixtures, and, as she’d learned, extremely chatty, curious about Erik’s injuries, and not shy about asking questions.

The night Sal had asked Erik point blank what had happened to him, Christine felt the question like a solid punch to the gut, leaving her unable to breathe, anticipating the worst.

“Bombing during the war. I have extensive burn damage.”

His voice had been succinct as he gave one of his little one-shouldered shrugs, and Sal had nodded. The next thing she knew, the men were discussing the single malt whiskeys the bar had on offer, and that was that. The following month, Erik had excused himself at one point from where he stood with a hand on her hip at the bar to _take a work call_ , which she knew was code for growling at Nadir to leave him alone for the night.

“We’re glad to see you both again! It’s good you two get out, too many people your age, it’s all work, work, work! Or else just sitting in front of the television or the computer! Life is too short to let it pass you by, live it up while you’re young and healthy. He’s lucky to have you,” Marilyn said with a smile as Erik weaved his way to the plain metal door. 

Most of the other club patrons never lifted their heads to notice the masked man moving through their midst, and those that did didn’t matter, at least not to her, Christine thought. She considered the occasional days when she still felt weighed down with feelings of worthlessness, when getting out of bed was her greatest accomplishment, and how Erik would abandon his work to find her, would worm his way under her arm, his long legs hanging off the end of her small sofa, and distract her from her melancholy until she smiled.

“No, we’re lucky to have each other.”

Sal had laughed, raising his glass to her answer. “Brava, bambolina. It takes two!”

She’d take the lead, she thought that night, as Erik moved from the floor to his work desk, spreading the brick designs out once more. She’d take the lead and show Meg what their typical nights out looked like.

  _I already made the reservation, so we’re all set! :)_

 Christine had called the restaurant and made their reservation for the following Friday, asking for a table down front, right on the edge of the small dance area, before texting Meg with the date and time. She wanted to see the belly dancers and have Erik explain the food to her and be able to kiss him across the table. They would have fun with her friends, and if Meg didn’t think she could handle the occasional inconsequential stare, it would be the last outing as a group they attempted. 

“Wear that dark blue shirt I like,” she murmured, shifting in the bed as he pressed his melted face against her. Her cornflower blue dress would be appropriate to wear to both lessons and dinner, and would be a perfect contrast to his midnight blue as she pressed to his lean side. “I love that color on you.”

 It had taken her some months, but she had learned to differentiate between Erik’s varied periods of quiet. Unlike Raoul and Meg, who filled the space of a conversation with non-stop chatter, her initial observation about the man next door had proven true: Erik said more in what he didn’t say.

 Silence, it turned out, had many moods. 

 She’d learned to identify the days when his mood was black, when he would be sullen and snappish. His lovely eyes would darken and his lips twist in a sneer, but Christine had long ago ascertained it had nothing to do with her, and gave him space. She would leave him at his piano or his work table to brood in peace, and once the dark mood eased its grip on him, he’d seek her out with an apology he didn’t really need to give and soft kisses.

 She knew when his silences signaled discontent, when they were anxious and preoccupied. His long fingers would curl and clench restlessly, knuckles popped and cracked. Thin lips would set in a grim line, seemingly cemented shut as his mind worked through whatever was bothering him. Silence thrummed with unheard music when it was happy, fingers that tapped an unconscious rhythm, hands that conducted unseen melodies; was accompanied by caressing hands when it was amorous. 

 Learning to speak the language of Erik’s silences had yielded her the ability to discern what he was thinking; the silence she read in that moment seemed to have the weight of the world resting upon it and Christine sighed.

 She gently stroked his head, dragging down his neck, all spots where she knew he had significant sensation loss. Moving up the side of his neck slowly, her fingers sought the tiny sliver of skin she’d discovered behind his left ear. Perfectly smooth and soft, the narrow crescent had somehow escaped the heavy burns the rest of his head had suffered, and she had wondered, on the rare occasion she could bear to think of it without sobbing, if his glasses being on his face at the time of the bombing was the reason. When her nail caressed the spot lightly, he shivered in her arms.

“We’re going to have fun tonight, okay? We’re going to have fun, and when we get home, I’m going to show you all the belly dancing moves I learn.”

.

.

 

"You can't go wrong with Rodgers and Hammerstein, Patrick. They're crowd pleasers for a reason."

 Her high schooler was auditioning for the local community theater program, and Christine had it on good authority, from several of her giggling girls, that he was more than partially motivated by the inclusion of a pretty senior from the school's show choir. 

"Like, something from Carousel? Or South Pacific?"

"Either one!" she exclaimed cheerfully, flipping through her book of sheet music until she landed on the song she wanted. 

_Some enchanted evening_

_You may see a stranger…_

In truth, Christine had been listening to the old romantic musicals more and more, would sing along to the sweeping melodies as she readied herself for the day's lessons.

_Once you have found her, never let her go_  

Patrick hovered at the side of the piano, nodding with wide eyes. "That's a good one. Do you think that would be good?"

"Well, we have lots of options," she said with a smile. Patrick was a gangling seventeen year old whose voice hadn't really settled at that point, but she knew he'd perform well no matter what. "Let's see, what's next…"

_If I loved you_

_Time and again I would try to say_

_All I'd want you to know_

Heat prickled her neck as she sang, too aware of the teenager at her side, and Christine willed herself to keep her composure. 

_Longing to tell you_

_But afraid and shy_

_I'd let my golden chances pass me by_

 Christine stopped playing abruptly, unable to continue. “You get the idea,” she said quickly, forcing a smile up. “I want you to listen to some stuff this week and narrow it down to two or three, and we’ll pick next week, okay?”

 .

.

 

“I think I’m going to quit my job.”

 He’d been tense and preoccupied all week, his long fingers unfurling and reclenching repeatedly. When she’d walked into the coffee shop that Wednesday, she could see from the rigid set of his shoulders that something was wrong. Erik never talked about his own sessions with her, for all she knew he and his therapist played Scrabble for an hour every week, so the silence during the ride home was not out of the ordinary, but she’d paid close attention his seeming anxiety in the following days. 

Christine knew he’d share with her eventually, when he was ready to do so, but she hadn’t been expecting a conversation about his career. Her brow furrowed as he lowered himself to the sofa beside her. She quickly tugged him to turn, pulling him back to lie against her. 

“Why? Did something happen? Is-is everything okay?”

A little half shrug and a long exhalation as she tucked her chin over his shoulder was her only answer for a long moment. Silence curled around the room before taking up her seat opposite them.

“I don’t need to be doing this anymore. My buyout would be an exceptional retirement package. I could freelance consult if I really wanted to keep busy.”

Four months ago she wouldn’t have been able to focus on his words, she thought as he continued his monologue, would have been too caught up in the hypnotic resonance of his deep voice. _His very well rehearsed monologue._ As he continued to give her a line item list of all the reasons he should walk away from his well-established career, Christine wondered if it was for her benefit or his own.

“Erik,” she interrupted, once he finally drew breath, feeling a tremor shiver up her spine at her voice, “what happened?”

.

. 

Patrick waved as the door swung shut behind him, and she let the breath she’d been holding for the duration of his lesson come wooshing out of her in a rush. 

Instantly, Christine felt her cheeks heat. Knowing the tears wouldn’t be far behind, she rose from the piano on unsteady legs and quickly crossed the room to lock the door. _It’s perfectly okay if you cry today_ might have been true, but that didn’t mean it would be acceptable to do so in front of her students.

The insanely wealthy company whose building he’d designed in Singapore was expanding their campus, and wanted Erik to design them a second marvel.

“I won’t run lead on a project of that scope again,” he’d insisted stubbornly that night on the sofa, as he rested in her arms. “It’s too big, it’s too much. I shouldn’t _have_ to.” 

The client in Singapore was insistent that they wanted Erik again, and the managing partner of the firm was loathe to lose such a lucrative contract.  

She’d asked questions trying to ascertain why he was so vehemently against the idea, why he was willing to walk away from everything without a backward glance when he’d almost said it.

“Erik, there has to be another solution," she’d implored, weaving her fingers with his. He was sitting up by then, his forehead bunched in consternation. He'd had a rebuttal force everything she'd said at that point, and was steadfastly refusing to budge. "You shouldn't need to quit...you love what you do!”

"I do, but not as much as I lo-"

 He’d stopped abruptly, cutting himself off, thin lips pressing together. Christine had felt color flood her face as his eyes closed, watched his throat bob in a hard swallow before he’d turned, once more settling himself against her. She’d fisted her hands in the thin material of his t-shirt when he pulled her arms around him once more. It was several minutes before he spoke again, in a low voice that rumbled against her, full of resolve.

“I was there for five years for the first project, Christine, and for that they’d least had the demo work completed on the existing site. I...I'm not willing to do that again. Not now."    

_...not as much as I love you_

The words were there, in his mouth, on his mind. He was never going to say it first, she’d realized. He didn’t want to push her, didn’t want to rush her into something she was unready for. His words that night in January had been ones he’d kept to--they could take things as slowly as she liked.  

_He doesn’t think that you love him, thinks you’re still making up your mind, probably still thinks you’re going to leave him eventually._

Despite that, he didn’t want to disrupt their routine, the quiet domesticity of their lives together.

She had entertained the thought of going with him, as she pressed her lips to the side of his head, wondered how she’d fare. He’d be working all the time, moreso than he already did, would be busy and wouldn’t have much time for her. She’d have to leave the vocal program, would have to leave the symphony...she’d be alone, cut off from her meager support system in a place where she didn’t know anyone or speak the language.

It wouldn’t work. She’d known herself well enough to be aware that it wouldn’t work...and obviously Erik had known that as well.

Somewhere beyond the closed classroom door, she was able to hear laughter down the hallway. Christine breathed deeply, attempting to center herself, to practice mindfulness, as one of her workbooks recommended. She needed to pull herself together before her next student arrived. _In...two...three...four...hold...two...three...four..._

Her fingers depressed the keys on her exhalation, before her voice rose to complete the line from earlier.

  _Longing to tell you_

_But afraid and shy_

_I'd let my golden chances pass me by_

She was being unfair to him. Christine knew that beyond a shadow of doubt, knew she was being horrifically unfair to him, and that it couldn’t go on. She couldn’t continue to let him go to bed with her every night—making love to her, holding her in the protective circle of his arms until she was asleep, before slipping out of the bed like a shadow to return to his work—not if he did so unsure of her feelings for him

_Soon you’d leave me,_

_Off you would go in the midst of day_

_Never, never to know_

_How I loved you..._

 Since that night, an agreement had been reached with the client: Erik would provide the design, would hand pick the architecte who would run lead on the project, overseeing and supporting remotely. He would still need to go to the job site. He had two trips to Singapore on his calendar, but beyond that, their routine would continue on as it had been.

 The only thing that had changed was he was working longer hours, and she went to bed every night with a stone in her stomach. The butterflies had left her, ashamed at her inability to simply _tell him_.

_Exhale...two...three...four_

A knock at the classroom door indicated that Jaclyn, one of her middle-schoolers had arrived, and Christine pushed away the heavy emotion, the anxiety and the guilt with which she seemed to have permanently saddled herself.

.

.

The first time it had happened, she’d been in the mall. 

It had amazed Christine, how adept her mind was at creating scenarios for her to fixate on, how clever it was capable of being without her consent. Those online images she’d not been able to help herself from seeking out, the articles that she’d read—they came back to her at the oddest times, leaving her a quivering, crying mess out of the blue.

That day, she’d been returning several items, was leaving the fitting room with two new work dresses over her arm, cutting through the men’s department on her way to pay, when she’d passed the table of men’s ringer tees. Tissue paper-thin, fitted, and kitten soft: they were the exact type of shirt he wore on the days he worked from home, the kind she liked rub her cheek against as she cuddled against him on the sofa, and she’d paused. 

Before she had a chance to decide which color she’d pick for him, her mind brought forth an image of a charred corpse being pulled from a burnt-out shell of a building, twisting the faceless body in her imagination into Erik. Even though she knew it was completely ridiculous and made _no sense!_ she’d stood in front of the table of t-shirts and had nearly collapsed in grief, crying as though he were gone, as if he weren’t at home waiting for her, as if he hadn’t texted her only minutes earlier, reminding her to stop and pick up a pineapple if she still wanted to grill one with the skewered shrimp they’d planned for dinner, as she’d insisted she did. 

When a concerned salesperson asked if she needed help, she’d asked in a heaving voice, through her tears, for one of each color of the shirts in his size, needing something tangible to hold, to remind her that it was all in her treacherous mind and not reality. She had pushed her way into the house a short time later with her shopping bags, having forgotten the pineapple after all, and sobbed in his arms, unable to articulate why she was crying.

Another time it had been early one morning, before he woke.

Erik was unable to sleep on his bad shoulder, which had necessitated her adjusting which was “her” side of the bed, unless she wanted to look at his back all night. Soft light had trickled in through the side window, whose shade she kept partially up, despite much grumbling from him. The morning haze washed the bedroom in cool shadows, but she’d been able to see his face clearly, pressed into the pillow beside her. 

The uneven texture of his burns, the pulled eyelid, the melted nose: they barely registered to her at that point and were thoroughly important. Not when he looked so at peace, not when his strong arm was a heavy weight over her, not when his long fingers tangled in the ends of her hair. 

Christine had felt a familiar heat flood her face and a thickness overtake her throat as she watched the gentle rise and fall of his breath. 

She got out of bed every day for herself, taught her lessons and went to rehearsals, got her nails and her hair done, put on a brave face for the world, and she did it for herself. He had been right--she was putting her life back together...but she often wondered if she'd be as far as she was if it hadn't been for him being there at her side. She’d not been able to stop the tears from falling that morning, as she tried to memorize how soft he looked, asleep beside her.

It had been months, and she still couldn't say the words aloud, at least not when he was awake to hear them. 

It hadn't been for lack of trying, and wasn't as if she didn't _want_ to say it, she'd berated herself furiously. She'd wanted to tell him every day, wanted to whisper it against his mouth every time their lips met, wanted to tell him when she kissed the back of his head as she left for her lessons, wanted to tell him every night when she tucked into his molten side.

She'd told Diane about the unreasonable, unexplainable crying jags, the terror that would unexpectedly seize her at the thought of something happening to him, and the persistent, nagging fear on her darkest days that she would wake one day to find that the last seven months had been a dream, that she’d still be in her pajamas, letting life pass her by as she wrapped herself in her misery in the corner of the sofa while the house next door sat dark and empty, no Erik alive there.

After she’d spent a chunk of that session crying, Diane had sent her home with a book on Complicated Bereavement and homework: Christine was to make a list of all the things that had happened to her over the last year and a half that would be contributing to these feelings of “grief transference.”

She’d written her father’s illness and painful death at the top of the list, of course, chewing her lip as she added Raoul leaving her and the loss of her job. Her feelings of inadequacy, of arrested development, her constant worry about the way she would appear in front of her friends, the way she felt like she never quite measured up to the expectations of the people around her. 

...And then there was Erik. Obviously he fit on to the list somehow, as all of her tangled emotions were centered on him, but how?

Their lives were being steadily knit together, as the weeks had turned to months, and months into seasons. Their joint routine through the week, their easy domesticity together, their projects.

The garden had been her project to work on, that spring, before it had been quickly absorbed into being _their_ project.

Diane had asked her, during one of their sessions several months earlier, how much time she devoted to her hobbies. The unanswerable question had gnawed at Christine.

“What does that even mean?” she’d grumbed afterwards, stabbing her spoon into her soup so viciously that it had sloshed onto the small table. The little coffee shop was always quiet in the afternoons, although the end of the school year had been fast approaching at that point, and she’d wondered if it was soon to be overrun with students and mothers with children. 

“It means you need to cultivate some hobbies.”

Erik’s eyes had remained glued to his phone, his thumb swiping frantically, and she’d scowled. 

“What’s a hobby? Music isn’t just a hobby, not for me. We’re fixing up my house because it’s falling apart, not because I have a burning desire to be on _This Old House_ . Eating rabbit food and ignoring your girlfriend to play Candy Crush is _your_ hobby, not mine.”

“I am _not_ playing Candy Crush, nor am I ignoring you...I’m catching a Pokémon, and I’ve heard every word you’ve said.”

She’d huffed out an aggrieved breath and pushed away her soup with a pout. Thinking back over the way she’d spent the last year of her life, she’d been fairly certain that Diane would not consider watching the Hallmark Channel in her daytime pajamas much of a hobby. Music, while being her main passion, was also her job. _Reading astrology books and having sex with my boyfriend?_

“Christine,” he rolled his eyes, sliding his phone back into his pocket and reaching across the table with a napkin to soak up her spilled soup, “don’t be such a brat. You have lots of hobbies.”

One by one, he enumerated all of “her hobbies” on his long fingers. She liked to cook, she liked to dance, she liked attending the symphony and the opera, in addition to singing…

A smile had tugged her lips as he talked, seemingly oblivious that all of the _hobbies_ he listed were things she did with him.

When she’d decided that she wanted to tackle fixing up Mama V's long neglected garden, it  was with the assumption that it would be her project alone. She’d started the job with gusto, excited over the prospect of seeing the garden restored to what it was in her childhood memories—brilliantly colored roses she’d picked as a child amidst half a dozen different perennials and flowering shrubs. 

 After the first few hours of toiling in the overgrown bed, she'd had a major realization:

 Gardening was hard.

 She'd strained her back digging up a buried stump, sliced her hands to ribbons on the feral thorny rose bushes. When it came to pulling the rest of the weeds and hauling bags of rock and topsoil, Christine felt no guilt enlisting the man next door to be her assistant, making her hobby, like all the others on her list, their hobby. 

She'd forgotten, at the time, that Erik was a bossy perfectionist, used to being in charge, and that he treated every task like a miniature job site. 

Her vision of restoring her childhood memories had been suddenly waylaid by internet research into the native pollinators, consulting the Farmer’s Almanac to make a chart of projected precipitation for the spring, and planting a small patch of vegetables she just knew he was eventually going to make her eat.

“Erik, I don’t need a water feature! All I wanted were flowers!”

“Christine, you said you wanted bird feeders. Do you want these birds stuffing their grubby little faces without being able to wash their beaks? We just need to run a pump up the base of the stand…”

 In spite of his bossiness and their bickering, every week that spring a new shoot of green would appear in the newly weeded and turned beds: new life she was creating together, little by little, with this man she loved. Once summer arrived, the garden was ablaze with color; flowers that had previously been choked out by the ravages of neglect, and Christine couldn't help but feel a certain kinship with them.

 She’d stared at her list in the waiting room that following week, her stomach in knots. At the end of the list, she’d simply written his name, unsure of how to articulate how is was she felt. 

 Her father’s illness, the difficulty of having been his primary caregiver, watching him grow progressively sicker and slip away, the fact that she’d not had the support system she’d been counting on once he’d died; the shame that had come from having been cheated on, the loss of her job, which had been the only thing getting her out of bed at that point, the worthlessness she’d felt in the shadow of her married, successful friends...and Erik. He’d happened to her unexpectedly, like everything else that had happened.

  _If I tell him I love him, something else will happen, and I’ll lose him._

Her face burned, and soon the sight of her list was blurred by tears. She hadn’t told Diane that she was afraid to tell her boyfriend she loved him, it seemed too shameful, too silly a thing to admit aloud. She didn’t need to wonder what they’d be talking through that day, as her name was called a moment later, only wondered how long it would take to work though this issue, freeing her to say the thing she’d know in her heart for months.

.

.

The phone was ringing somewhere near her head. Christine’s eyes were glued shut, and she couldn't force them open any more than she could make her leaden head lift from the pillow. 

Reaching out blindly for the charging cord, she reeled the phone in like a particularly annoying fish, unseeing.

“Hewum?” she mumbled sleepily into the handset, her face still pressed into her pillow.

“Christine?” The man’s voice on the other end of the line was uncertain, obviously questioning whether he’d called the right number.

“This is Christine,” she murmured a bit clearer once she’d turned her face out of the pillow. She’d managed to force her eyes open, and squinted blearily, attempting to focus. The arm draped over her was a solid weight, keeping her pinned to the bed. 

 “Chris...it’s Raoul. Are you...are you okay? You sound like you’re asleep.”

 Instantly she was awake, wide awake and annoyed. 

  _Who the fuck does he think he is?!_ the little voice in her head raged. Peering at the phone, she saw it was just nine thirty in the morning--almost a half hour before she usually got up.

“That’s because I’m still in bed. What do you want?” she said flatly into the phone, not caring how rude it might have been. On the other end of the line, her ex-husband faltered.

“Oh...um,” Raoul laughed uncomfortably. 

Christine rolled her eyes. Eight months ago, this phone call likely would have sent her into paroxysms of grief; now she was just annoyed. “Raoul, if you don’t have anything to say, I’m hanging up. Have a nice li--”

“Wait! Christine, please...just wait.”

She waited. She heard him take a shuddering breath, and she could clearly picture him on the other line: all glowing, golden, boyish handsomeness, nervously trying to channel his harder older brother.

“It's just...I’m getting married, Chris. I’m getting married, this weekend. I just wanted to say…”

She rolled her eyes again at the hesitation. “Raoul--”

“I’m sorry!” His voice burst through the phone, and Christine held the device away from her ear in irritation. _Almost two years and it still takes him that long to be able to say it_ , she thought uncharitably.

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what happened, for the way things ended between us, I...I never wanted any of that, you have to believe me, Chris. I’ll always love--” 

“Don’t,” she cut in sharply. The body attached to the heavy arm shifted behind her, tugging her closer before resettling. “Don't give me that ‘I'll always love you’ bullshit, okay?” she hissed in a quieter voice. “You’re sorry for what happened? Fine, great. Be sorry. It doesn’t change a thing.”

“Why are you yelling at me?” His deep voice, heavy with sleep, rumbled just over her shoulder. Christine turned her head with a small smile, ignoring the pleading voice of her ex-husband through the phone.

“I’m not, silly,” she whispered softly, pressing a kiss to his arm. “Shhh, you don’t need to be up for a while, go back to sleep.”

“I’m aware of that,” the voice mumbled into her hair. “Yet here you are yelling at me.”

“Chris, will you please just give me a chance to talk?” Raoul begged plaintively through the phone.

“You have things to say, so I’m supposed to just shut up and listen?” she snapped, forgetting that she was trying to be quiet for the sake of the sleeping man beside her. 

Forgiveness was something she was still working on. She’d accepted her role in the demise of her marriage, her passivity and inability to articulate her needs, had accepted that placing Raoul’s needs ahead of her own for years had set up the shoddy structure of their relationship that could not withstand the strain of her diverted attentions, had forgiven Raoul from an intellectual standpoint...but the hurt had not vanished, and she found she wasn’t able to be friends with her ex quite yet.

“Is that your ex-husband?” Erik asked, all sleepiness suddenly gone from his voice. “Christine, give me the phone.”

The heavy arm draped over her suddenly came to life, and she batted away the hand that reached for her cell. Christine found herself engaged in an epic struggle, fighting to keep hold of the phone while holding Erik back. 

 He instantly went for her ribs, using his knowledge of her ticklishness unmercilessly until she was forced to snake a hand out and attack his hip, where she'd learned he himself had the same vulnerability. He twisted away from her hand with a hiss, sounding so much like the cat that she dissolved into giggles.  

For the moment the advantage was hers, and she quickly used it to hold her phone out over the end table. Lacing their fingers, she moved his hand to rest against her stomach, underneath her tank top. 

 Raoul's voice had never stopped droning.

 Shushing Erik, she went back to listening as her ex-husband babbled about how they were too young and rushed their relationship before either of them really knew what they wanted out of life.

 “Too young,” she repeated with a disgusted chuckle. “Even though we were both several years out of grad school. Do you even hear yourself, Raoul?”

 Over her shoulder, Erik was quiet. _Too_ quiet, Christine realized belatedly. 

 The hand at her belly flattened out against her abruptly, long fingers spreading wide, spanning across her, and his mouth dropped to her shoulder.

 “Has he always been such a pompous blowhard?”

 Christine turned her head with a smile, and Erik’s lips were right there, waiting to meet hers. The phone dropped off her pillow and slipped into her blankets, the voice of her ex-husband distant and unimportant as she kissed the man she loved. 

 A kiss that was deep and hungry and fueled by mischief, she realized too late. Christine felt her toes curl from the heat behind his attentions, gasping as their mouths broke apart, and the hand pressed to her stomach drifted lower.

 “You have terrible taste in men.”

 “Oh, is that so?” she countered with a breathy laugh, retrieving the wayward phone. She wasn’t able to see his starburst eyes, but Christine knew without needing to turn that they’d be bright the prospect of causing trouble. Her giggle cut off on a sigh when his fingers moved to slip between her legs, pressing into her hot folds.

 “Do you remember that trip we took with my parents when we were engaged, Chris? I think about that week a lot...You were miserable the whole time and I knew it, but I didn’t know how to make it better, so I ignored it. I didn't know how to be a good partner to you then, and we both should have realized that’s what our marriage would be like.”

 Christine bit back a gasp as Erik moved his fingers in precise circles against her. Raoul’s words were surprisingly insightful, she managed to think with the tiny corner of her brain where rational thought still existed. Unfortunately for the man on the phone, that corner was shrinking rapidly. She could feel his hard length pressed against her backside, and rocked her hips back with a devilish smile of her own. Erik retaliated by pulsing his fingers between her thighs, and Christine saw stars. 

Raoul was still pontificating on how the demise of their marriage owed to more than just his affair when Erik lifted her leg over his hip, and when he pressed into her from behind her head dropped back with a gasp. 

“Chris--Christine? Are you alright?”

“Raoul!” she gasped, locking on Erik’s wrist with a vice-like grip to stop his movements. “Raoul...I don’t care. I appreciate you taking the time to call and apologise, but I don’t care. This is for you, for _your_ conscience, not for me. I don’t need your apology anymore. I hope you’re happy, I hope you’ve figured out what it is you _need_ to be happy, but you can go back to your life without feeling guilty, because I-I don’t need you.” 

The hand that had stopped Erik’s fingers now encouraged him to circle faster, her hips canting lightly. Raoul had sputtered after her declaration, and was still droning in her ear. Erik's movements within her had begun to pick up speed, and he groaned deeply at her neck.

“Raoul, I have to go! I’m very—” She let out a gasping squeak at a thrust that filled her completely, utterly horrified with herself. _You’re being fucked by your boyfriend while your ex-husband calls to tell you about his wedding day._ “I’m very busy! I hope you’re a better husband this time around, have a nice life! Goodbye!”

“Are you going to sing for me, lovely girl?” Erik’s voice was a resonant hum against her neck, and Christine arched in response. As soon as she disconnected the call on Raoul's confused sputtering, he’d begun to thrust into her in earnest, fingers and hips and teeth and tongue all flooding her with a pleasure so intense, it bordered on pain. 

Erik was a professional asshole, and she was going to give him a _very_ strongly worded piece of her mind once her approaching orgasm was complete, she thought as her gasps provided a staccato syncopation to the steady rhythm of his pumping hips. She was on the precipice of a great fall, felt dizzy from the height, so close yet still not quite there… 

The rough scrape of his teeth over her shoulder made her cry out, and then she was flying, the mooring lines that kept her tethered to the earth clipped as she vibrated in his arms, feeling him follow her before her own tremors had subsided. 

When it was over, Christine found she could barely remember her own name, let alone her reason for wanting to scold him. When his shoulders began to shake, his rich laughter rumbling through her, memory was restored and she turned to scowl.

“You are the _biggest_ asshole, Erik!”

He rolled them as he laughed, pulling her against him and she swatted half-heartedly at his chest. 

“He deserved that and you know it. Who calls people this early?” 

“This is when normal, functional adults are already at work, Erik.”

“Well, then we should probably try to be normal, functional adults since we’re both up this early,” he murmured into her hair once his laughter subsided and she huffed.

“ _Some_ one made me exercise this morning. I don’t know about you, but I need a nap.” 

His deep chuckle vibrated against her, and Christine smiled as she snuggled into his warmth, her eyes already slipping shut.

“Whatever you say, lovely girl. Do I get to hold the princess whilst she slumbers?”

“If you think talking fancy is going to butter me up,” she mumbled into his skin, “you’re right.”

.

.

“Nice and easy, princess. You don’t want the lure to splash into the water. It needs to land on the surface like a dragonfly.”

They were standing on the dock of Lake Ploumanach, where he’d taken her fishing every summer since she was very young. She watched as he demonstrated an expert cast into the softly lapping water, the lure-covered fisherman’s hat she’d bought him for Father’s Day shading his eyes from the sun that filtered through the full trees surrounding the lake. 

Christine lowered herself slowly after her own sloppier cast, to sit with her legs dangling over the water. Summer afternoons spent here were always carefree and easy, completely free of anxiety. It seemed that no matter where she was or what she was doing, the stress of thinking about something else--having to perform in her studio class, an exam at school, a meeting at work, an uncomfortable conversation with a roommate--always seemed to trickle into the thing or place she was ostensibly meant to be enjoying...but time at the lake had always been free of that. 

It was just her and her father and the filtered sunshine, the trees a buffer against the stress and anxiety of the rest of the world. A soft breeze rustled through the green canopy overhead, whispering at her ears as her father began to sing softly.

_Sometimes when you're doing simple things around the house_

_Maybe you'll think of me and smile_

_You know I'm tied to you like the buttons on your blouse..._

“Daddy, when did you tell Mommy you loved her?”

She interrupted the phrase before he completed it, squinting up to him in the sunlight.

Her father smiled, blue eyes a million miles away in memory. “I told your mother I loved her every single day,” he laughed. “I suppose the first time...well, the first time was when I knew it was true. When I knew I didn’t want to imagine my life without her in it.”

She already knew this story, had heard it growing up. Her father would talk about her mother with a faraway look in his eyes, love and sadness twisting around and around, a double helix of misery and cherished memory, and as she grew older and more aware of the pain her innocent questions seemed to cause, Christine had simply stopped asking. They had met in school when her mother was studying on a student visa. Just before she was due to return to Uppsala, the poor violinist convinced her to stay, and Christine was born three years later. 

She thought over his words, comparing them with her own thoughts, the night before Meg’s wedding, months earlier. She couldn’t imagine the shape of her world without Erik in it. The scattered puzzle pieces of him had come together at last, and the real man they formed -- quiet and complex, spiky with sharp edges, but also loving and considerate and tender, unfailingly funny and sarcastic -- had entwined himself fully around her heart. He didn’t feel like a grasping, claustrophobic presence there, there was no latent desire to escape, no sigh of relief once she was alone...he belonged there, enmeshed with her as she was with him. 

“Does he make you happy, princess? Does he make you smile?”

The very thought made her smile, the thought of Erik, and her father being there with her, knowing her so well. “He makes me laugh,” she choked out, still smiling, “he makes me laugh every single day.”

“Do you love him, Christine?”

“Yes.” The sunlight that filtered through the trees sparkled on the lake’s surface, and she squinted against its brilliance as she answered without hesitation. It had been so long since she’d talked with her father, so long since the sight of his smile didn’t take her completely to pieces. She’d missed him, missed this. “I do love him. So much.”

A bird swooped low over the glittering lake before climbing through the air, higher and higher until it disappeared over the tops of the trees. Christine tracked its movement until it was out of sight, suddenly aware of the tears that tracked down her cheeks.

“Well, you ought to tell him so, princess.”

Her father had always had a way of making things seem easy, of helping her to stop overthinking. Christine couldn’t help laughing then, at how simple he made it sound, knowing deep down that he was right, and she was being ridiculous over the whole issue. As she laughed, a bird swooped low over the glittering lake before climbing through the air, higher and higher until it disappeared over the tops of the trees. 

 “I miss you so much, daddy...but I’m trying.”

 The soft breeze still rustled the bright green foliage, and a leaf fluttered down tickling her nose.

 “I know you are, princess, and I’m so proud of you...I’ll always be here, Christine.”

She started when she realized the leaf that tickled her nose was real. 

 

“Get up, you lazy thing,” his deep voice whispered somewhere close to her face, tickling her nose once more.

 Christine groaned, turning her face into her pillow. “Go away,” she moaned. “You only let me sleep for five minutes.” The bright light that flooded into the room told her this was a lie, but that seemed like a terribly unimportant fact. She felt the soft hop of the cat on the bed and opened one eye blearily. 

 Bibi batted at her feather dancer, which Erik had been using to tickle her nose. The cat vocalized in confusion, annoyed that her toy was being played with without her, and from where Christine had drawn the blanket over her head, she heard him sigh. 

“C'mon, Bibi. Princess doesn't want to get up and play with us. Maybe the birdies outside want her pancakes.” 

He'd lifted the cat as he spoke, threw the bit about pancakes over his shoulder as he moved to the door. Christine gasped and threw back the covers, sitting up so quickly it made her dizzy. Erik carried the cat over his shoulder like a baby, and Christine caught sight of the pair as they turned out the door, Habibti appearing to wave at her.

“You'd better not give my breakfast to the birds,” she called out, rushing to the bathroom to brush her teeth, fetching her short summer robe from the back of the door. The sunny kitchen was empty when she entered, although a plate sat on the counter next to a glass of orange juice. 

A stack of pancakes stuffed with his organic blueberries waited for her, a small ramekin of syrup and a de-thorned red rose from her great aunt’s garden laid beside the plate.

Her heart felt as though it were inflating a bit with every breath she took, crowding out everything else. That empty hole inside of her had long since been filled; filled with music and laughter and life, and now she was so full of love, she was nearly bursting with it. Silence kept her company as she ate her breakfast, tasting his quiet devotion and care in every bite. 

The syrup, she realized with a laugh, like the orange juice, was sugar free. 

When she crept to the back door after placing her plate in the sink, he was there, at his little cafe table on the flagstones, sipping his coffee slowly. Bibi was picking carefully through the grass exploring, as Christine tiptoed around the table. 

“If I don’t get a sticky, syrup-flavored kiss, I’m going to be very upset,” he murmured as she seated herself across his lap before rewarding him with her lips.

Meg’s eyes had widened comically as they were shown to their table the previous evening. 

There were other tables, Christine noticed when she’d stepped through the doorway with her fingers tightly laced with Erik’s, that were on a dim corridor, far away from the small, parquet floored-space that the bellydancers would perform. She didn't need to think too hard to know that if Meg had been responsible for setting the plans that night, that was likely where they’d be sitting. Instead, the smiling hostess had led them to a table just on the edge of the dancefloor. 

She’d made a point not to notice if anyone stared, and didn’t let it bother when Meg’s eyes darted nervously around the room as they waited for their drinks. As Erik explained to her what different things on the menu were, the server overheard him mentioning the time he’d spent in Rabat and Meknes, prompting the owner to come out of the kitchen and chat with their table. 

The dancers had been exhilarating, and when they’d arrived home that night, she’d shown her appreciation for his continued willingness to go out with her friends, for the way they’d shared harira and couscous, for the way he’d leaned down and kissed the corner of her mouth, heedless of who was watching or what they’d thought, by grinding atop him slowly, attempting to replicate the seductive moves of the dancers they’d watched. Little bursts of color and light had exploded behind her eyes with every rock of her hip, feeling him fill her completely. Her slow game had only lasted a short while before his own hips had begun to leave the bed, thrusting upwards into her until she abandoned the pretense of not wanting him to increase the speed and urgency until she was gasping his name.

Christine wrapped her arms around his neck, breathing in the peacefulness of the afternoon, turning her face to press her nose to his throat periodically, breathing him in before kissing the spot where his pulse thumped beneath her lips. Every few minutes he would do the same, lowering his melted, misshapen nose to her hair, breathing deeply, brushing his mouth against her temple. When she tipped her head back, he was there, her partner in a perfectly choreographed dance, lowering his lips to hers, kissing her slowly.

_You should say it now, this is the perfect moment,_ she encouraged herself. _The sun is shining, it’s beautiful, it was a nice morning...you love him, you love him more than you’ve ever loved anyone, and you should tell him, tell him right now._

“I’m glad you have plans tonight.”

The rich vibration of his deep voice rumbled through her as he sighed into her hair, breaking the moment and pulling her from her reverie. The symphony was traveling for a private performance that evening, and although she’d be back that night, she wouldn’t be seeing him.

“You need to make friends,” he’d encouraged when she’d mentioned the invitation, insisting that she didn't need him to meet her at the restaurant where the choir was meeting after the performance.

“I have so much work to do today,” he lamented, checking the time on his phone, “which I need to get started on.” 

Before she could recapture that soft, perfect moment, Erik was gently shifting her to her feet, rising behind her. She watched in dismay as he had a stern conversation with the cat from the edge of the patio, trying to coax her back into the house on her own before resorting to bribing her with the cheese he’d brought outside for that exact purpose.

_Another moment wasted, stupid._

When she’d left a short time later that afternoon, he’d already been at his work table, speaking in rapid Mandarin on his bluetooth, a design program open on the computer in front of him. Christine kissed the back of his head gently as she moved past, attempting not to let her regret show as she headed home so as not to disturb him. Erik reached out for her hand as she passed, hooking their pinkies. He held her eye for a moment, crinkled and bright with his smile behind the heavy black frames. 

“Have fun tonight, lovely girl,” he whispered, tugging her in until she met his lips once more. “Text me when you get home.”

.

.

The cemetery was serene. 

Wide open, tranquil and quiet that morning. She sat in a white plastic folding chair, the same kind that she had seen being used countless times during her other visits. 

The weather had been too cold for an outdoor service for him, too blustery and uncooperative, even if it hadn’t really started to snow in earnest until a few weeks after, just before that first Christmas she'd been alone. The time at the graveside had been minimal that day, a few muttered prayers and scattered roses and that was it. 

She had been numb.

This morning though, was warm and green and serene. “There are ducks on the pond, sometimes,” Christine said through her tears. Tears, even as she smiled. “Ducks and geese. Once I came and there was even a swan!”

She’d sat in her car that day in stupefied wonder having never seen a swan outside of the zoo before. 

“I-I didn't tell you about it. I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to, but--”

Her voice broke off on a choked sob as her father reached over from where he sat beside her and took her hand.  

For the better part of that first year he’d been gone, she would go to the cemetery to visit his grave monthly, had even gone weekly when the weather was nice, before that year's endless winter had set in. She would pull up to the little bluff, just before the duck pond, would park her car, and then sit there, paralyzed, unable to move. 

 She knew where his stone was, had been able to see it from where she'd parked, but never once had Christine been able to make herself leave the confines of her car.

She hadn't talked to her father in a very long time.

It had been a watershed moment, when she'd admitted this in therapy, during a blustery March storm. She'd told her therapist that her boyfriend—for she'd always called him her boyfriend, long before Meg's wedding—had told Diane that her boyfriend had said he thought there was a difference between grief and depression, and Diane had agreed. She'd told Diane that she hadn't talked to her father in months, not until that night in her kitchen after New Year’s Day, when she'd told him about Erik and all she'd been through; had told her that she was afraid to actually visit her father's grave.

And wasn't until then, until she'd admitted these things aloud, until after Erik's words, that she'd understood. She'd hidden herself, had wrapped herself in the protective buffer of her depression for months so that her heart didn't need to grieve. 

After that day, she had begun talking to her father again.

It had started after that night in her kitchen. She would tell her father about what she’d planned to cook with Erik on the nights he came to her house for dinner, would tell him about what they’d cooked the nights she went to the house next door. She’d told him about therapy and how hard it sometimes was, about the routine she and Erik had every week, about their date nights and home improvement projects. She’d told him with gasping sobs about starting with the choir and how it felt being back at the symphony, how many memories of him and her childhood still lived there, whispers of the past in every corridor, and that she’d begun to sing again, sang all the time now, as she once had.

_All is healed_

_All is health_

_High summer holds the earth_

_Hearts all whole_

_Small, Shaky Steps Still Count_ was one of her favorites amongst the art prints Erik had bought for her, featuring a small, uncertain dik-dik on a ballerina pink background, an affirmation she repeated to herself every day. 

She had taken the shaky first step that spring, once the cold weather had finally broken. She’d stared at the ceiling in her bedroom for a long time that morning, the call of a robin outside her window a cheerful melody line over Erik’s deep breathing at her shoulder. It was a perfect day to do something outside, she’d thought. A perfect day to visit her father.

She’d pulled up to the duck pond and had actually left her car, had brought a small bunch of daffodils from Mamma V’s overgrown garden, which she’d just decided she wanted to restore. 

She’d made that first visit on her own, had sat in the grass and sobbed, placing her hands on the stone in hopes he would know she was there. 

Erik had been waiting for her when she’d arrived home, had held her in his arms as she’d cried. 

Silence, she’d discovered, could be a warm blanket, comforting and enveloping and completely undemanding.

That seemed like a very long time ago, she considered, as her father squeezed her hand in his own. She visited him all the time now—visited with him in her dreams, at least once a week, revisiting the places she’d loved as a child—and regularly visited his headstone, planting flowers, and putting up a small border of decorative garden stones. Erik had come with her, after her first few visits alone, had stood shifting from foot to foot behind her as she sat in the grass and made a tearful introduction. 

There had been a violent storm earlier in the summer, petrichor wafting into the windows of the school shortly after rolling thunder seemed to shake the old building. She’d stopped at the cemetery on her way home, had expected to find fallen branches and felled trees, but the area around her father’s stone was clean, the only headstone in the vicinity that was so, a neat stack of leaves and branches near the communal garbage a few yards away.

“We had some things to discuss, man-to-man,” Erik dismissed when she’d questioned him that evening, had leaned up on her toes to kiss the back of his neck with tears in her eyes.

Her father pointed with the hand that was not gripping hers securely to the water’s edge, where she was able to see the aforementioned ducks and their young. 

“New life, Christine. New love and new life all around you...time keeps marching forward princess.”

 

As they watched, one by one, the downy little ducklings hopped into the water after their mother and paddled into the pond.

“I’m afraid I’ll lose him, daddy.”

Golden rays of sunlight had begun to break over the treeline, and as she sat there with her father’s hand in hers, one of the ducks on the water took to the sky, moving over the trees until she squinted in the light. There was soft music playing, and all was peaceful.

“I lost everything else, everything I loved. I don't want to lose him too. What if something happens to him? What if he gets tired of me, or if he gets hurt again? I-I can’t lose him. I love him too much.”

“Life begets life, Christine. Look around you...new life, new love everywhere. He makes you happy, and he loves you. You can’t be afraid of what’s to come, you can’t be afraid to live. None of us know what the future holds, we have to love the life that’s in front of us today.” 

She nodded slowly, watching the ducks exit onto the green lawn, on the other side of the pond. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever admitted to herself before that moment why those three little words were so hard for her to say, even though she had been discussing her complicated feelings with Diane for weeks, but her words to her father were true, she realized. She was terrified of losing him, and her track record with losing things over the past several years hadn’t been great.

“No matter what, you’re moving forward, princess, every day, and I’m so proud of you. You know what you need to do now.” 

She grinned through her tears at his words. It was music theory all over again, she thought. She missed this, missed him, would always miss him, but the grief, at long last, no longer overshadowed the sweetness of her memories. The notes of a violin were slowly overtaking the gentle murmur of her father’s voice as the sky continued to lighten.

“Remember, no matter what...I’ll always be here, Christine.”

.

. 

When she woke in her own bed early Sunday morning, after the night out making friends with her symphony choir peers, she’d squinted in the pre-dawn haze that filtered in through her windows. 

There was music playing, she was certain of it. 

The plainiative notes of a solitary violin drifted in through her open window, and as she stood there listening intently, the notes formed themselves into a recognizable tune. Christine gripped the window sill to keep from staggering.  

_The Lark Ascending_

 A swirling maelstrom of emotion gripped her, sucking her down into its depths, the force of it dragging her to her knees. The violin was coming from Erik’s house. She’d never heard him play before, she realized, had nearly forgotten that he did so.

Christine scrambled to her feet, nearly stumbling down the staircase as tears blurred her vision. When she threw open her own back kitchen door, the chill early-morning air rose gooseflesh on her arms. It didn’t matter that the dew coating the grass was chilled, or that she was still in her underwear. She needed to get closer to the music, to _that_ music. 

The hole in the hedge that separated their yards, the same one she crawled through all those months ago was still there, beckoning to her from where she stood in the grass, tears streaming down her cheeks. 

Erik was playing _The Lark Ascending,_ a piece of music her father had loved, had played the solo on for years at the symphony. The graceful notes, those of a bird taking wing; of a heavenbound soul glancing briefly back, one last time, coming now from Erik’s house seemed to her too great a sign to overlook. 

_You know what you need to do now_

As the first rays of the sun broke over the treeline, Christine could feel her father smiling down.

“I love him, daddy. I love him so much. I need to tell him.”

He’d been horrified when she appeared at his back door in her tank top and panties, puffy-eyed and smudged with dirt from crawling through the low hole in the hedgerow, as she’d done once before, with a very different outcome. 

 The violin was carefully abandoned in its case atop the dining room table, where she’d eaten her pancakes the morning before. Erik’s arms were secure around her when he scooped her up, fretting over how chilled her skin was, scolding her for the scape on her chin from the hedge. Christine wrapped her arms loosely around his neck, breathing in his warm, spicy smell as he carefully moved up the staircase with her in his arms.

 The heat of the water made her skin tingle, and she hadn't protested when he’d soaped her gently from head to toe with the coconut-scented body wash that had appeared in his bathroom one day, a few weeks after she’d started sharing his bed regularly.

 His lips had traveled down the valley between her breast softly as the water sluiced over her skin, washing the soap away only moments before his mouth followed. Erik was on his knees, had her pinned to the wall, with his broad hands spanning her hips as he kissed over her stomach when the words left her mouth, blurted as hot water surged over her.

His head pulled back sharply as she spoke, his multi-colored eyes wide and mouth opened in surprise. Christine cringed in horror with herself, for that was _not_ what she’d intended, not at all!  _So fucking stupid, Christine, you’ve waited months and this is how you tell him?! Such a silly bitch..._

 

Turning away as she blushed to the tips of her toes, she didn’t consider that the nozzle of the showerhead had been aimed at the back of her head, hot water cascading over her as Erik had trailed his mouth down her body. Her movement left him, still on his knees staring up at her open-mouthed, in the direct path of the spray, catching him square in the face. 

 He coughed and sputtered as the water choked him, and Christine wondered, as she felt herself shrinking, if this might be the moment she _did_ actually die from excessive blushing. She’d completely bungled what was supposed to be a significant moment in their relationship, and if there was ever a time for her overworked blood vessels to completely explode, this was it.

 Instead, Erik’s deep, ringing laughter filled the shower, echoing off the tiles, and before she had the presence of mind to flee, he was pulling her the shower floor with him, his shoulders still shaking with laughter.

“You almost killed me! I almost _drowned_ , Christine!”

Her eyes narrowed at his continued laughter, suddenly regretting her decision to cut the water’s flow. At least, until his next words. 

“I love you too, lovely girl.”

The shower floor had never seemed especially romantic to her, nor was it particularly comfortable, but somehow, as his lips moved on hers and his long fingers pushed through her hair to cradle her head, it seemed to be the most romantic spot in his house, on the street, in the city. It hadn’t been the perfect, meaningful moment she’d been hoping for, but it had been good enough for who they were. 

“I love you,” she heard herself murmur aloud as his thin lips moved across her jaw, over her ear, down her neck. Aloud, while he was awake, words she’d been saying in her heart for months. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

 .

.

Sundays had been designated as their day spent together, when he would refrain from working and she didn’t have to worry about any of her new responsibilities. That day, after she’d nearly killed him in the shower and he’d repaid the favor by carrying her back to bed to kiss his way up her legs, pressing his tongue into her until it was her turn to beg him for harder, faster, _more;_ after they’d worked on her music and played with the cat; after he’d shown her the sketch of the elaborate herringbone brick walk he’d designed to connect their yards— _so that she’d never need to crawl through the dirt like an animal again_ —that last said with a scowl and a disapproving shake of the head, Christine decided what she wanted them to cook that night. 

She’d seen the designs for the walk half a dozen times already, she’d realized, wondering if he’d been waiting for her to say _it_ before he made the suggestion to further entwine their lives. 

“Breakfast for dinner?” Erik asked dubiously from where he rested with his head in her lap as she scratched the back of his neck with her newly done nails. “That’s so lazy. Aren’t we supposed to be making real food on Sundays?”

She glared down at him through her oversized frames. His glasses had slipped down his face as he’d turned towards her, and she thwacked the edge with her nail in retaliation for his cheek before pushing them gently back into place.

“It’s really good, _and_ it has vegetables. That’s your favorite! We can make it with the zucchini from our garden. It’s special and I really want to make it with you.”

 Erik rolled his eyes at her assertation, snorting as he pushed to his feet. 

“Fine. Vegetables for breakfast for dinner, how could I resist? Do we have everything you need here?”

He was right, she thought as she retrieved the mandolin from her own kitchen. The strata _was_ far simpler than what they would normally prepare together on a Sunday, but it was not without significant meaning. 

“You know, I’m pretty sure zucchini is actually a fruit,” he quipped, before picking up on her mood shift as she methodically lined up eggs and cheese on the counter. Christine tasked him with grating the zucchini while she browned the sausage.

She loved him. She loved him, and she’d at long last told him so, would tell him every day for the rest of their lives together.

_Shadows are fallin' and I'm runnin' out of breath_

_Keep me in your heart for a while_

_If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less_

_Keep me in your heart for a while_

She remembered the last time she had made this dish with her father, the last time he’d warbled that song as he stood in the kitchen beside her. It had been that last year, after the terminal prognosis but before things had truly gotten bad. Another moment she’d snatched out of death’s hands and hid in her heart. 

He’d browned the sausage while she cracked eggs, and it wasn’t until after he was gone, after Raoul had left and her world was upended, that the poignancy of that day, the last time she’d cooked with her father, weighed her down. 

She’d pulled the mandolin out one of those first nights there in her new kitchen, wanting to make something that was comfortable and familiar, but before she’d cracked a single egg, she’d remembered. She’d remembered and the act of remembering had hurt so deeply, she’d put everything away and turned her back on her kitchen until the day she’d decided to make fruitcake for the man next door.

_When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun_

_Keep me in your heart for a while_

_There's a train leaving nightly called,_

_"When all is said and done"_

_Keep me in your heart for a while_  

She thought, if she listened closely enough, she could hear her father’s voice there in the kitchen with her and this man she loved. 

Music and food and love.

Erik bumped her elbow with his own as she stood at the sink after transferring her sausage to a colander to drain. She hadn’t realized that tears slipped down her face until he raised a hand, catching the moisture on the tip of his long index finger before raising her chin up to face him. He nudged her glasses up gently, wiping away the wetness that pooled there before pushing them back into place. A wayward curl was tucked behind her ear and then his hand was tenderly cradling her face.  

The uncertainty that was sometimes there in eyes was nowhere to be found. Clear and endless and full of that look, that look he’d given her so many times, that made it impossible to breathe, impossible to look away.

He’d been trying to tell her for so long, she thought. 

“I love you, Christine.”

Someday, she knew, she would be able to stop counting the good days, someday the good would bleed into the bad and she wouldn’t even notice, but right now she still needed the reassurance on her calender in the form of a small heart that the good days were steadily outnumbering the bad. 

For now though, she could focus on the feeling of Erik’s lips pressed to hers, this imperfect man she loved, who loved her in return, and the fact that she could talk to her father without being crippled by grief. Her life, at long last, was moving forward. 

It had been a good day.


End file.
